


Frost Sparkster

by NullBubby



Category: Kirby (Video Games), Mario & Luigi RPG (Video Games)
Genre: Holidays, huge honking gathering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28062036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NullBubby/pseuds/NullBubby
Summary: Snow is coming soon, so with presents only imminent, it can only mean a huge meetup for many. Friends, acquaintances, familiar faces, and downright strangers, the group has it all, but even still, a distant party could help for some unnecessary variety.





	1. A Glimpse of Glee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meetup's coming soon. Real soon.
> 
> People doing whatever in the downtime.

The heat throbbed, despite how seethingly gentle it led to believe. The air, let all its cautious warmth and soothing, pleasurable aura, was painless, but even still a bit more rowdy than any few voices around. Maybe it could’ve been avoided—a lot more likely, really, if not outright guaranteeable—though with only a candle or so to spare, the leading was decently interminable.

There were many, listless pales, stiffer pinks, even the wall joined in with its own disturbing illusion of lumped gray. None were particularly noteworthy at the time—a simple blue was all asked for—but they seemed an eternity as the enforced sentry. A wind was all it’d be, far later or some vexed misrecollection of time, but a merest word couldn’t hurt.

And luckily, there happened to be some face so close, idling away the forever with her own faint of hands. She looked probably the most relaxed of all, despite glaring face and loosely adjusted neon style trailing her head, but as soon as the opportunity had been seen, a dangly, drooling tongue had whipped it nonexistent. No contact, no sound, nothing more than a wave of a hand, but it was enough of a determent in itself.

A seat dragged. It filled in an instant with ovoid robes, grayed so exclusively his eyes couldn’t have been any other color.

“Hey, Susie.”

She waved, sighed, and flattened a hand onto the table, the other resting to her lap.

“Hello.”

“You been doing anything the pass the time?”

“Not particularly.”

Her cheek grasped a rest over her palm again. With a single flick of indifference, her hair groped the open environment in the rear—something almost like eyes crept into the fleeting gap—and fled back to the slightest brush of the table again. His eyes trailed the entire moment, contemplating something before being rubbed back to the present.

“Me, too.”

He let his grip up. The surface tapped, once, twice, hundreds for each he let his fingers touch the table, his rhythm only stopping with some miracle of a remembered moment.

“I heard there’s supposed to be some others coming as well?”

Her eyes finally showed again. “Yes, I have noted the same.”

“Did... you happen to know _who_ , exactly?”

“My knowledge is limited to solely one. I apologize.”

He dismissed the remark and signed his hand to continue.

“I have not been provided a name, though I understand she is bringing company.”

“Oh, thanks, I guess.”

He didn’t seem to mind the note much, eyes trailed off to some indistinct side. For a good few seconds he struggled with weariness, face limping farther without likely any decent notice of trailing the floor until jolted back upright by a bump in the adjacent room. He trembled in the seat, leaned back, and turned all around until a short peek toward the distant eyes, in which he then slumped back.

His glance transfixed over the center candles of the table, met with some foreign feeling of interest.

“Have you noticed any information regarding the soon presence?”

The first word broke his stare, alleviating the scrunched air to a wheeze. “Nothing, sorry.”

She nodded, then returned to her own stiff boredom in an instant. The table quaked a few times more. He too smelled the lacking anything to sift in the time, and soon succumbed to restlessness’ ever-growing conquest as well, soon the entire table and its entire few residents drowned in its dullness.

At last, the side doorway burst, one far too exhilarated by the nothingness to notice immediately. Though difficult behind her enormous head, out showed was a blue posture—googly eyes and a gaping, gooey tongue listing his appearance final. A shouting emerged, too slurred to be articulated beyond a recognizable syllable every two moments, soon crashed into the side wall as the blob hopped nonchalantly.

“Whada—Whadis he think he’s doing?” the farther air almost mumbled. “I’m just tryna’ find him back here.”

Gooey—from what’d been heard—looked back to the impending threat, a wild gaze of a fellow no shorter or taller than himself, and waved his tongue excitedly, a few drops flicked about to the wall and floor. Susie fell back, her form finally given some stiff alertness against the table, leaving only a few sounds to piece the gap of indistinct hops and shouts behind her incredulously bloated obscurity of hair. By next she’d seated herself, the duo was gone out the other end of the dining room.

“He’s not... _always_ like that, is he?”

“This is my first time seeing him in any fashion. I cannot speak of personal experience or information I lack.”

“Oh.” He glanced off and chuckled.

A cold wave blew, though whether he’d been shivering before was enough a dispute it was actually recognizable the worthlessness of time spent on it. Only reluctantly, he strayed his head far off as could go without tilting all the way off his seat, immediately met with another jumbled nonsense of both. Seconding his face back to the table and its sole habitat, he waved to none, stood, and limped toward the hallway a moment before picking his balance, the candle’s essence flickering to his departure.

The hall wasn’t very long, but rather spacious with its sole door pitched to the inner side. Something like bickering filled the air forward, and for a moment he paused, stared back into an illusion of greenery tinting the ceiling. To the side, toward the knob, then all around again, he turned, and he let a shrug and continued along.

The first second into the new room a puff blasted by, behind emerging a limping color barely losing pace. For a moment he was stunned, all the while around a couch scrunching and the cords of a ceiling fan dangling so dangerously close to its breaking point.

“‘Ay! I could use some assistance over here!”

He didn’t bother past a confused glare.

The same patting came up, whizzed his tongue up and by, then flew again. Another incoherent shout broke, and all at once the room fell back to chaos in their endless circle. Somewhere up a bell rung, constraining his face against a single second more in blank concentration, and he looked to the havoc wreaked in the exact motion flying through the room every few seconds.

A sigh broke what must’ve been the tenth ringing, and he started a moment into the end of the hall. His hand raised firmly, letting all Gooey pass before his sole pursuer stopped less quietly than could be even imagined. The shouting was quick to continue, demanding something along an explanation as he attempted to weave around the hand, in back of the room a rounding gallop missing mark of his noticing. A foot stepped to the air, paired alongside a final threat and missing bounding, and right over his last word both figures collapsed to the floor.

By next the lamp’s flickering had caught him, an exasperated facepalm had stung his attention, nearing a closer indifference every moment he continued on the floor.

“Thanks for nothing,” he grumbled upon getting up.

Gooey appeared less interested in the arrived guest and more so the stilled taste of ground against his face. Marx was quick to head over, raise a foot behind with evident readiness to kick him as hard as he could, though the situation was realized and he was dragged along before anything could be done.

“Hey!” he whispered.

There was no response, and he fiddled with the locks on the first door.

“Can I greet ‘em? I know I just said you was no good in helping me get blob-boy down, but I get what you were trying to do.”

Confusion dazed him. The doorbell struck once again, and a faint calling spoke from all the way in the living room.

“Y’know, I bet you could be my assistant from here on out. Did just perfect there, so why don’cha stick along for the ride?” He barged forward and hopped to the unlocked knob, attempting to clamp it with his mouth to little success. “C’mon, lemme take the lead here!”

“Move!”

“Why don’chu move?”

Gooey let his tongue out from beneath, finally, leaving a face open to the assault of a clanging, an unhinging, then a cold surge of outside air. He blinked, shielded his eyes from what appeared nothing, then looked up to a faintness of blue among a lifeless snowstorm past the screen door, a light snickering falling of the side.

“Uh...”

He stumbled several times with a sound, a muffled mumbling from behind the side barrier likely contributing to his giddiness. The voice yelped at his immediate smash against the door’s front, though it helped none with his speech capabilities.

“H—G-Greetings!” 

He waved, backed slightly, and bowed narrowly from behind the still locked door. The face ahead tilted gaze just past, a blob still fumbling his tongue around in the background, and motioned toward the doorknob, in which he finally jumped and shivered toward.

“Bonjam.”

“Gah! Wait, wait, hold on here.” His face peeked from behind the door, finally, and met the new face still awaiting her position inside. “Who’re you?”

His question, rather genuine sounding, resonated to only a jittery gray still tapping the forward hat until a clearly confused face. Without a word, it formed to a gape, and he turned back in all his prepared arrogance.

“My _sincerest_ apologies, ma’am. Step inside, please, I’d bet it’s pretty cold out there.”

He did his best imitation of the earnest motion moments before, though all it amounted to was a flopping of his hat against the floor. Her shadow loomed past, door shut in an instant as he narrowly missed striking with the sheer length of his headwear.

The couch was settled by one, the lamp glaring an inexplicable patch to the blue ball still breathing over the floor. His outstretched tongue alone mesmerized her stiff gaze so wildly, so quickly in the lengthy blinks it took for Marx to miss recognizing his hopeless imminence.

“I apologize for that whole shebang just gone down. Allow me to introduce myself and my partner.”

The room sighed again, but it at least meant the attention he seeked at the moment.

“I’m Marx, it’s a wonderful excellence to make your... uh, presence.” He sidestepped, letting his face rise from the floor toward the sole other standing company. “This here is my assistant, but you can just call him ‘Assistant’.”

Her gaze slipped cautiously, never straying a moment from the sole expression in padded breaks between blinks. His face lit at the nearing, and he would’ve drew another bow hadn’t it been for the light shove.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Assistant.”

Even sooner than he’d gained his traction, his face fell deeper into the greatest misstep it looked it’d ever face.

“No, no, it’s—”

“Alright!” Marx cut him off. “I bet it’s neat and all to meet him, but we’re both expecting some the same of ya’. What’d they call you, hmm?”

The stare was interminable, but never in the slightest did the cheerful, almost absentminded gape miss prolongment. Again was the same nudge of a few fingers behind, and the same his lacking result.

“Francisca,” she answered after many more moments.

Assistant nodded, doubled his gaze over to the still blockaded hall, and backed to it slightly, the continuing rant preventing any noticing bothering his attention. The area trembled with the lamp’s warmth, Marx yet to become disinterested in any his nonsense, and with a wave out the corner beside his ear, he continued toward the trembling lump on the floor, never slipping face off sole noise of the insides.

He was finally at the entry, and with two else still in view, he squinted nervously, swished around, and immediately bumped the corner. Recoiling, he scrunched his face and mumbled, expression so earnestly twisted on pain rather than the dreaded voice standing so obliviously before his audience.

Still, after the much longer seconds passed in his final realization, it was only Gooey’s rising given notice to the attempted escape undergone right behind.

“Well where’d you think you was going? I ain’t done here—”

“I’m supposed to, uh... get the food ready.”

He hummed his disapproval. “Uh-huh, that’s still gonna take some time. You got plenty more moments to spare ‘round here.”

“You’re not on cooking duty.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well...” The casual blue stared him again, and Gooey finally awakened beside, rotating sluggishly with his face open to the air. “ _I_ am, okay?”

He was gone without another word.

“W-Wait, get back here!” Marx leaped to the door with his demand unmet in the sole second he waited. “I’m not done!”

A sag. Turning to Gooey, he halted, mumbled, and resumed his position ahead of the couch, upset to degrees of exaggeration.

“So what’ve you got plannin’ed here?” he continued in his standardized bluntness, uncaring of the blinked lamp’s eye in his corner.

Static in her position in the dining room, still, Susie looked threatening herself with the verge of sleep, her eyes were so sagged. Behind, he limped along silently, noting nothing beyond the flush, pink meadow trailing her head, until he suddenly struggled with a quick flickering of his vision to the floor. He met both sides of his hand, then the coating over his chest in another sigh off her. Brushing himself, he continued along.

Just by what looked a mutated sphere stationed against the wall, both sofas were entirely clear save one figure nearing drowsiness and relaxation simultaneously. By lack of a door, he stumbled around the wall’s companion and to the opposite cushion his double.

“Hey.”

Magolor’s ears perked. “Oh, what’s up?”

Marx yelped something from across the house. In their distraction, the farthest light fluttered again.

“Him, I guess.”

“Who is it?”

“Huh?”

“Someone’s here, who is it?”

“Oh.” He sighed, and dropped his hand to the armrest. “Francisca. That ring any bells to you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen her before.” His stare dripped downward, blank.

The room caught his gaze in the silence. In a blink, Assistant’s face had wandered to the indifference of the sparkly tree, glittering in tinsel, ornaments, trinkets, and lights. Spattered with colorful boxes beneath, the gifts wandered so far off the treelight their end paled behind the distant shorter couch.

Again, the room’s naturalest interpretation of light fizzled from the side, and he finally stared off in what looked only an odd misinterpretation. Before him—far, past the loafed form of his duplicate—was a scrunched pair of legs, coated in an almost glossy deep gray. Though the shivers would’ve brought the most dispute any other time, their eyes looked so intently, so willfully down into their knees it was impossible to tell any more of their face in obscurity.

His hand inattentively reached toward Magolor. “Hey, uh...”

“Hmm?”

“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing toward the young form in the deepest corner of the house.

Finger to the ceiling, it was evident his mouth would’ve been gaped in self-suspense behind his hood. “Y’know, I still haven’t figured that out.”

“Has—uh, have they spoken up to anybody? Or... anything?”

“Not since I’ve arrived, no.”

He contemplated a next question. “Did you happen to know who invited them?”

A shrug. “No, sorry.”

“Okay.”

One more look into the boy, and he let his face back to relative regularity toward the floor, restless. Every few moments he’d glance over, the sole hint of face in a lopsided cap, and pause in an endless recursion of mind, something probably along daze and confusion littering him, maybe even awe or wonder. And each time, he’d stick his position back, turned so many times in just minutes even the air grew fidgety of its doubtless bets.

A nothingness broke an equal. Timed, it was about a minute until he even twitched again, and somewhere beyond a sigh, a jumble of numbers came. Nine o’ clock, on the dot. The sheets sunk the tiniest bit deeper between the cushions, and in the doorway, a squishing passed twice, then thrice, then so many more times couldn’t be counted.

Then finally, a ding. By itself it was nothing—someone else was sure to take care of it—but next second either knew, eyes were up in a jolt.

“I got it, I got it!”

Both scrambled up and off their seat, out to the hall in another moment. Warped past the interior’s first barricade, farther to its depths of the dining room, somehow they’d arrived in time for another set of footsteps to daunt the oven.

“How’d you open this thing...” he mumbled to himself, eyeing the prepared meal inside.

“Marx, move out of the way. I’ll get this.”

He spun back. “But I heard _Assistant_ was the one gonna get the food.”

“Who?”

“Jeez, make up your mind.” He faced the window again, managing a single slap of his hat in frustration before being tugged back.

“Marx, let _me_ do it.”

“But why?” he whined from his futile confine. “Is it because I don’t got those fancy hands of yours? I promise, I got experience in this stuff.”

Magolor sighed, motioning with his free hand.

“W-Wait, what’re you doing? I wanna get the food, let me do it!”

Marx began to struggle, though he’d already been completely confined from any movement beyond kicking and flailing with his hat—which he openly took to no avail. Dragged back, his face was forced open after the oven’s creak, out only something with enthrallment to make him drool. His flailing and immature whining picked up again, almost to the point of inconvenience of his captor.

At last, the turkey was set on the table, waking Susie. She gave only a stare to the last two—an overgrown baby and his reluctant caretaker—before the first seat was taken. They filed over, albeit Marx grumpily standing ground his hardest while being dragged to his chair.

Magolor suddenly snickered before his seat.

“Oh, what’s so funny?”

“I’m not hearing any of this,” he started, waving his hand comically. He struggled with another giggle. “This is _not_ your best behavior. Starting now, you’re on timeout—”

He broke into laughter, the rest of his disbanded quartet all staring him with varying indifference. Marx fronted his face back beneath the table’s carpet, undoubtedly missing ground of hiding his expression, though none seemed to mind over the anomaly of the sole still standing.

“Just give me a second—” He wheezed, coated his stomach with a hand, then coughed a good eternity without any other speaker to blast some distraction. Dusting himself of nothing, his fit continued after only a glance toward the adamant, indecisively sincere face before.

“Uh-huh, it’s been a second.”

He grumbled, and Magolor finally took his seat across his closest cohort. In another minute the room stilled, and Assistant dropped his signature glance of his rear, again met with nothing. Susie cleared her throat and realigned her posture, hands overset in her lap.

“Alright, later, nerds.”

“Now hold on just a second here.” The path into the longer hall was blocked, though both stood put regardless of openness. “I said you’re on timeout, remember? Sit back down, I’ll let you know when you’re good to go.”

“Okay, nuh-uh. I ain’t hearin’ any—”

“Marx?”

He sighed and sagged. “Whaddya want?”

“Sit down.”

“Well when can I get back up, hmm?”

“When you’ve learned your lesson.”

“About what?”

His voice lost its return trail, soon his raised hand and expressionlessness. Upon his direction toward the table, a silent tongue broke, not any of the seated duo letting a hint of respect to its vague aura.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m outta here.” He faced the hall, again, only to be stopped by another few seconds’ glance. “You was over here just sayin’ you _didn’t_ know why I was sitting, what now?”

The face rose to his superior—a sole finger outstretched to his rear, mirroring one the same of all but orientation ahead. Twisted around, his hat leaped and bobbed to the sides a multitude of times as he eyed the fridge, what part of the counters could be seen from his stature, and utter emptiness of the air from the gape in his mouth.

“What am I looking at?”

“I said it was my duty to take the food out. You decided it’d be best to burn yourself trying.”

“I wasn’t gonna do that!”

A nod led way to only a increasing plead in his shorter face.

“Please?”

It still didn’t matter, anyway.

They grumbled the settlement in wildly unequal volumes and expressions, the preexisting dwellers still letting the only stare they could ever let off. About the same procedure repeated from everyone, and in the fallen silence it could almost be noticed Susie’s height advantage over the others.

“So... what did you guys have planned over here?”

“I assumed the moment had arrived for consumption of these meats. It was a foolish mistake of mine, and I understand our company has yet to remain completed.”

In whatever unknown universe surrounded Susie and her deep stare into the level patch of wall ahead, all gaze turned to Assistant. He recoiled, trembled, and peeked his hands from beneath the table.

“U-Uh...”

“Spit it out!”

Marx was pelted by a scrunched napkin.

“I don’t actually... I guess I thought you were, uh... the same, and all.”

“The same wh—”

Magolor slapped his hands down. “Just!—Waiting for the others, too?”

He nodded from across the table. It didn’t look he recognized where he’d still had his hands set.

“Hey, maybe you oughta check.” Opposite his end, Marx poked a glare, though it was quickly shushed beneath a wince. “They might not have rang the doorbell, and... it’s always a good idea to know.”

“Y-Yeah...”

He idled the quiet, brought a whole two faces to unfortunately appease breaths between blinks. A nervous glance played from across the shorter end of the table maybe twice, then a hand summoned some inexplicable force upon him, his body rising to the nonexistent incantation.

Recognized the fullest extent of the situation, Magolor stood and approached, guided his double off to the hall of the locale’s entry, and promptly disappeared behind the same wall. By his return, Marx already looked eager enough to jump off his confining construct, the long stare beside less than willing to provide suitable retribution herself if need be.

“Marx, do anything like that again and I swear on your presents this year you’re not seeing me at least a month.”

“Aww, now’re you trying to make a _threat_ to me by not letting me see you? How sweet, I care about you, too.”

His eyes sunk into a palm. “And your hat goes.”

There was the loudest sound any could’ve ever heard, yet still, the one pink most prone to it didn’t even flinch.

While some equally unresponsive voice trailed from down both the locale’s halls, an unrivaled deepness settled the farthest room—made it rather difficult to suffice without spotting, but the next realization was a welcome one. Among the breaches of the door was a border between comfort and crawlers likely spattering the floor, all noticed who to not dare try standing upon. In the midst of the darkness, beneath a barely restored ceiling lamp, across a bed so unequally empty, a gentle puff swayed the atmosphere, the balance was so broken.

It was almost comforting seeing him there, bundled up with a pillow as equally thriving over the same life force keeping his protector as eased. Still, it looked unorthodox finding the very array of hands keeping his cushion so desperately cozy in one so unfamiliar, but... it was peaceful, nonetheless.

It was so relaxing, even the faintest joined light faded itself—not wholly, but so recognizably soothingly it was impossible not to scrunch up at breaths alone. Even the sole buzzer of the room, a beetle no larger than any’s palm, couldn’t break their will, but regardless saw the stare of above and fell to silence at the hint of a bounding outside.

It was the doorbell, of all things.

“G—ah! It’s mine, it’s mine!”

“Marx!”

The wall looked... rather still, at least. Maybe in his eyes—far as that face would never admit it, even much anything beyond how many shivers he could get done a minute—but nonetheless, among that shriek it was something like fortification he couldn’t delve into when the time needed. Again, the hall let out its calm cry of above, the door out of reach and, to an extent, sight, but all to be bothered was how tight the corridor led to believe.

And as soon as he’d shivered his face back from its misdirection—into a faint gaze and blue silence—his back was all left to unknowingly suppress the pressure knocked in.

They toppled into the greatest disbanded trio of the evening, regardless if time was still ticking for hours longer, or even that opportunities for the position were rather sparse, to say the least. Picked in maybe the most ambiguous spot, depending on outlook beneath the hood, the tip of their tower shone solely his weariness of it all, impossible for his favor to lead just a look down into the great softness of a hat cushioning him, and even farther—into a lean, necessarily—to his faded doppelganger, knocked of most life he still had twiddling his thumbs a moment prior. Hopelessly, he’d have been begging the door to stay shut, but all she gave was a sigh.

“Hello yello!”

Far above anything he could’ve ever comprehended was a star.

Despite the front of the open door ahead, Marx still had yet to be disputed his position of most reluctant in everything, including even standing. After a good few tugs, quiet whines, and squinted waves to ahead, the pile disbanded, and Assistant was finally let his share of unnaturality, something like standing straight. He toppled to the side, a pair of hands adjusting him upright, and the sole that could motioned toward the evident confusion of a floating face before all outside.

It was Marx who would’ve reached first, but luckily, the situation was recognized and the mere plant of a hand set him struggling again. With a few indifferent blinks, she faced the company again, drew her hand, and unlocked the door. It was then he decided he’d be best exploiting disgust, and with his tongue out, another minute lashed at the first impressions of an already deformed cast.

“Sorry,” she added upon Marx finally being rested to his babysitter once more.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! I think I get the experience of spit far too much...”

A foreign mumble came of outside, and something like a transparent grimace broke from the wasteland of endless snow outside. Verging almost a spoof creeped to unsettling perfection, if not outright smashing the borderline, it otherwise shoved back a silence with a ghastly gleam—hallucinatory, could’ve been sworn.

She hummed gently and reached for the doorknob at last, only to recoil back so far in the expression following she almost stumbled of her immense jolt alone. Immediately reached toward the couch, the faint contrast of white spots against red completely unfaded, a look behind would’ve revealed she wasn’t alone in the feeling.

“No! What do you think you’re doing!” the same yellow sphere shouted outside, paired alongside a fretful mumble and invisible spurting of electricity.

At least another minute or two strolled without the risked approach to the door from any—the best, if possible to be considered, Francisca’s dared look into the outside. When all was finally cleared without word, Magolor was kicked into the position ahead, sliding forward with mind elsewhere. Even at such a distance it was evident his trembling, and far more so the same eyes’ replica he’d just abandoned.

“I’m really sorry about that! You see, _Plant_ here doesn’t know how to control itself every once in a while.”

A tilt of the face came with her emphasis, though if he saw something outside, he couldn’t let it on to the others. His hand started to the doorknob, unsure, then he glimpsed back to a stuttered silence once more as faces began to meet. Suddenly a jumbled syllable emerged, then over and over, unstoppably, him transfixed on the faint yellow and fainter red dimness outside.

“Again, sorry!” She floated to the side, nudging her face forward for a cold stamping to approach. “This here is Plant. I promise, it really didn’t mean anything by that.”

He’d stopped stiff by the first grounding of the pot. Somehow, his face found way to the long figure ahead—its support in the cleanest, most polished planter anyone could’ve seen, the indescribable weaving from dirt to what could only be known as a head—and he soon fell to lifelessness on the floor.

“Oh _boy_ , am I offa timeout?”

Outside stood an enormous potted figure, something so indescribably monstrous and simultaneously surreal in its odd grin, planted in the darkness.

Despite his endless array of doubtlessly blurry hands, Taranza still found difficulty in so much strolling down the hall. With every displacement of one palm, he trembled and almost stumbled before setting another maybe half a finger’s forward, in which the process would remain to recur. His weariness was a certain contender to the misfortune, but whatever distant reasons for wandering down, the doorbell meant something.

In another minute’s time, he’d reached the next unfamiliar wasteland—a flashy pink the first attraction of his gaze. Upon the next stamp of his fingers the color broke position, resting the smallest portion on the table for a quiet stare to meet. He glanced off to the kitchen’s unexplored remainder, met with nothingness so far as tiredness could concur, and a hand held to his head.

“Oh...” He groaned. “S-Susie?”

“Yes?”

He sighed again, rubbing his forehead against his knuckles. “What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty in the evening, and approximately forty additional seconds.”

“And when is it we’re—”

His face scrunched, then his hand a moment following. In silence, he sighed, mumbled incoherently, then raised his eye to a blinding of lightless pink joining the stare into him. By his next glance up the vast majority of his eyes were obscured by hands and hair.

“When is the whole gathering?”

“I apologize, I do not understand what you are referring to. Could you provide greater specification?”

A grumbling rumbled his sweat. Whether stressed, cold, or just exceeded in bodily temperature from such a cozy blanket past, his face took on nothing but weariness and obscurity.

“When everyone... comes together at the tree, and we unwrap all those... boxes, colored boxes in that foily stuff, what’s-it-called.”

“I do not know the precise timing, though I am under the assumption of midnight or it’s vicinity. To your latter question, I presume you are referring to wrapping paper.”

“Huh?” he rasped. With another few seconds of quietude behind, he lifted his face to eternal eyes. “Oh, just wanted to tell you I’m done over there. You can... go ahead.”

In the time it took for her to blink he’d wobbled off in a relatively straight path until finally meeting another body in his exhaust. He looked up to the same as before—unaltered of any but closeness—yet somehow she almost could’ve appeared... calming, in such a stance. Under the rage of just a room or so down he simply sighed at a sight.

Had he been any more awake her greatest disregard would’ve endlessly looped in mind. Standing, what remained of his air depleted as her own hand found some use beside him, easing him slightest bits down to her seat. The headache raged on, leaving him all to do in groaning and falling to a separate warmth as the rest of quiet fluidity dispersed behind an unnoticed wave.

“I don’t think I got the best sleep,” he groaned to the open candlelight, head still verging burial into the table before.

“Excuse me.”

“Huh?”

For the brief instant they flashed, his eyes looked to find support only in some indecisively deserved miracle.

Behind the toppling array of his hands, littering and towering each other atop the table, stood the same blue hair, facing with as much indistinguishability, indifference, and otherwise incompetence in feeling. He simply shook in response.

“Bonjam. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He blinked.

“Our guests have arrived, and it seems our fellow hosts have encountered... an unexpected panic.” Her eyes closed, and her face lowered softly. “One has completely immobilized, and I ask for assistance in bringing him to suitable rest.”

“I’m fine!” a colorful voice cheered from down the hall.

The coldest aura helped itself to another shake of him, beside sitting an equally chilled puff from flame. For an instant it looked he was simply following suit with her subtle emphasis of head, though it only took until the sag of his hair to recognize how slowly his eyes were turning. A full second, and only an irritation of the candle realigned his normal state.

“Huh?”

She didn’t bother with anything beyond another eternity of a stare before lifting his hand off. In spurts he limped along, trailing his hands vaguely beneath their upright statures, but the most meant was his actual capability beyond weariness. Into the same tightness of walls cornering him, he looked up in a sunken posture—face and all.

Through many more breaths and inaudible mumbles, he parted company of the ground again to an entire commotion. It was nothing dreadful by looks of it, not even anything half-resembling a sound to fill the study, but it was only before her hair darted from its obscurity of nothing did so much change in outlook.

If anything, the first question he’d have was the plant.

“Oh, hi!” a floating, yellow ball dressed in dangling boots about shouted over a lifeless panting beneath. “Nice to meet you and all, but it looks we have a situation here.”

He attempted resorting to the wall for comfort immediately after dismissal of whichever indistinguishable hand, only to be met with a soothing heat—almost too much, in a universe he could ignore the faintest yelp from its positioning. His whole face lit up beyond regular form, and quickly he retreated to the other end of a hall, gazing into the poor gray ovoid he’d accidentally socked of breath.

“Sorry—”

“‘Ay, don’t go picking on poor Assistant now! What’d he ever do to ya’?”

The orb turned to the crowded hall. “Oh, that’s your name? Well, nice to meet you, too, Assistant.”

An equal sigh emerged, then a facepalm before both holds retreated back to his stomach.

“Yeah, uh-huh. He was just picked right on over here somethin’ like tw—half an hour ago as my personal slave.”

His face stuck to incapable indifference, obscured fear, and masked confusion above. Other than the looming shadow of a head, his expression didn’t appear to resonate to any.

“Servant?”

No difference. One of them groaned again.

“Jeez, what’s it take to satisfy you guys?”

“Marx!” a shallow voice croaked. “That isn’t helping!”

There was another breath, then shivers filled the hall. “You’re not the best fit to be helping now. Would the couch sound nice?”

“N-No, I’m...” His eyes scrunched, the inhale only looking more painful as he continued sucking air. “I’ll be alright. He needs our help right now.”  
  


“And he’ll be just fine with the rest of us. You can come with me while the others sort this out.”

His free hand raised, met unseen pressure to the point of lifting himself, finally. Her face was as calm as ever seen in preceding moments, but it still stook a whole other wince before he could see back up to the rest of the vibrant cast before. Whether stares or supplemented vigor the cause, his face drew back to the sidelines upside down, below, a fist clenching in rest.

The ground wheezed, and at last, he nodded his surrender. Without a word, his hand took its occupation and his form elsewhere trailed behind, the sole grace of his situation a free hand to coat his chest.

“So are we good?”

Marx nodded, just dripped his tongue to the side. An eerie watcher approached in the momentary silence, only when downed a single droplet of spit did he lurch back into the wall.

“Hey! No touching my hat!” He turned to the emptiest corner, the plant and all watchers staring in with varying confusion. “This thing’s pretty clean,” he mumbled rather audibly.

The room sat cold again—save a plop down to the couch and its coinciding, exaggerated sigh of relaxation. The plant looked to its sole hovering cohort, given a brief mix of irritation and disgust, then twisted its head all the way around to the floored company. Still, his life looked upright only due to his absentminded panting. With a quick glimpse to the rest of the room, in its path inducing a startle and another vexation, its red-robed clinger turned down, mumbling again of a distant language.

Their shortest approached. Marx finally snapped upright from his seat at first interest in the new party. Looming just barely over his unconscious form, a quiet onlooker stood, gently bobbing, softly eyeing with a face no less obscure than whatever else their group already had to offer. With however calmness they managed under the situation, their greatly opposing painted helmet in tow to mask any true expression they could’ve showed, their robustness looked unmatched, even of the overshadowing plant above.

Under their flashy shell, _someone_ must’ve been expecting brittleness.

Sighing, all the way, her hand darted past the sharpest edges of every cut corner, some struggle unmatched in at least someone’s exhaustion. Behind stood the same limpness, trembling of her cold, most probably, or some echoes of behind—the distant corridor of only dread, he’d seen.

Back to the couch—which he’d maybe never know until the correct hour served some soothings—his free half collapsed to the joint of cushions, guided back to rest solely due to his company. His eyes met open stillness, a face into nothingness of the ceiling’s cavernous corner, and some bounding squished him scrunched again. By return of the next closing outside, maybe one of his best naps would’ve been imminent.

And without any past a faint, cold breath to savor, the room shivered in audibility again, even the farthest torchlight of a standup lamp quivering under its command. His dangling ear twitched. Gooey circled the half of the couch he could without nudging the wall, by next ticking could be heard the pattern morphed into a patrol of sorts. From one end, where his drooped face shut, he rounded the first armrest, peeking the tip of his blobby mass above for an unseen voice to denote, then past for another ear-tingling, to the rear to stare a stiff expressionlessness before continuing. Almost, it could’ve seemed like a personal sentry, despite any look into his rolling eyes instantly proving otherwise.

“Anyone stickin’ round here?” the doorway suddenly exploded.

His immediate reaction was a wince, unnoticed by the sole gatekeeper of the other few colors could be seen just round from his sagging hat. With something like a shrug emulated on his face, he bounded forward, almost bumping Gooey while the others trailed in.

The first to be seen was Francisca, again, though only barely. The opposite end of the couch submerged by her rest, and in a moment the same echoing wheeze stationed through. By Marx’s lingering disgust at the absentmindedness met, the other cushions had followed the same path into slighter depths.

“Man, he’s still breathing like that?” The floor rumbled again, twisting some urge from him upon the last drop. “How hard’d you hit him?”

“Marx,” he groaned. “Cut it out. He didn’t mean to do it.”

“Yeah, _sure_ whatever ya’ say.”

Gooey sent his wave from behind, dropping a light glob of spit to the hat ahead, though he managed to not notice. The ground returned with a gentle plop, outside responding by stares, and for once something along quietude had stalled—at least in regards to sound worth noting.

The yellow ball twisted to Magolor, then Francisca again. “Should I? Or...”

“Go ahead.”

“Oh, alright.” She neared her spotted company, stopping almost level with the plant’s head just beside. “Come on!”

The helmeted creature jumped, jolting toward their party with almost trembly bounds across. Flying out from their rest behind the couch in a single bound, the dangling cable stood the most evident among a couple dozen shades of colors all around, some possibly standing in undisplayed awe at the silent remark of a safety hazard—sole contrary Marx’s grudging stance. About his position a step or two out, the outer net of shock somehow froze before him, though whether appreciated in his reluctant step was a forever unknown.

A red jacket flung upward at the first communication of the helmeted guest, face unmistakably in tow, though none seemed to mind or even notice. Cowering in place, eyes jammed so tightly, ahead saw Gooey inattentively scooting out of the way, though they didn’t go anything beyond shaking, whimpering an auditory arc to the air around.

The red-robed mumbler hopped off after some moments and guided the helmet forward, at last. How long looked a situation none wanted to bother seeking into, but finally, it looked something would progress.

“ _Hello_ everyone!” she began, booming capability increasing the jitters of metallic coating beneath. “It’s nice to meet you all here. Anyway, my name’s Starlow, former—uh, representative of the Star Sprites. Nothing fancy regarding that today.”

“Well what’s that mean you can do?” Marx immediately whined.

“Sorry, none of that today.” Starlow turned to the rest of her varyingly trembling party. “Some of you were here before for this, but this here is Plant. It can get a bit _feisty_ —”

She flashed an annoyance, responded with an invisible grin.

“—at times, and it might not bother thinking of anything except violence to get by.”

Plant’s teeth met another grim grin, a few startled from its sudden face—its own group not excluded from the silent terror. Taranza especially looked prone to a fate upon the couch as well, his panting becoming frailer every second he stared deep into the plant’s faceless form. Marx stood the only other with any sort of expression, though he was instead glancing all around the environment, peeking toward the entry every so often where a few hands drooped to.

“Sorry, sorry! It’s not _always_... that’s not what I meant, no need to be scared!”

Its head told of only confusion, if discernable, staring into her without anything regarding expected response. From level of its pot, at least, there still stood a gentle clanking and humming.

“Hey, where’d Susie go?”

“Then down here, we have Shy Guy.”

The stiff mask raised to her, paling the beside pot’s inducing of trembles for a moment some were surely thankful for. A light rap and rub to a helmet later, they murmured, climbed upon the dirt it’d stood so intently on earlier, and latched its stubby hands over the even stem, above twisting some inattentiveness. With a squinch and a turned concern all around, an accidental pull, and a quiet beam to the barrage of figures set forth, their words induced only what lay in capability—confusion.

Upon another stutter from their again scrunched posture, they backed and muttered something indistinct, groping to their plant with such care and tightness. It didn’t seem to mind, though the last of the floor looked about ready to lose the plug over their head, long since succumbed to the possession of shivers.

By some miracle, their last was spared an introduction from a glaring gasp in the edge of the room. A first cough, then all were looking toward Magolor on the couch closest exit—even if only absentmindedly. In a cold shiver the same likely cast redirected their faces to the ground, hollow, silent clanging, and at last the cushion grew its stance, a panting, bewildered pair of coated eyes in a mess of figures everywhere.

“Took ya’ long enough!”

At least, he _might_ have intended to speak.

“I—I tell ya’ what, y’hear? L-Look, you was out cold—wasn’t anything near hot, nothin’. Nup. More like, something like... half an hour!”

They were barely given a moment before Francisca hurdled back across the endlessly fraught field of the full living room, to her spot, left a bothered relocation from her expression. By a few steps, the situation was sure to have been resolved, but still, the reds didn’t appear too eager in accepting it.

“Can I—”

“Nuh, nuh! Shh!” He turned back down to the array of gifts scattering the only deserted zone of the room. “I’ll get it.”

Across the floor was another exhausted breath. “Go ahead.”

Marx just shushed her again, and the sight stilled, somehow. Kicking aside a few boxes of the floor, his intent seemed obvious, but upon one holding his name in an enormous print following suit, internal query soon dwindled.

Finally, by a rather indistinct wrapping, just behind maybe the most evenly large, he spun, tossed back a few others in his path, and stepped right up to the only unintroduced face in obscurity. Past their unpaled darkness of the room, he simply stared, deep into a green pair looked about ready to follow to the mess of a foot’s wrath just ahead, yet somehow all they could manage was a tremble.

“Alright!” In a final hop, he spun fully, transfixing the whole crowd to him. While above, a same, still glance showed predominant indifference, none spoke. “Y’all give a nice welcome to our latest and greatest buddy of the new bunch, Lil’ Sparky!”

Something over his head chomped, but he just stuck his tongue and pranced back. Past came a shivery breath, though it was only Magolor’s prior condition restating.

“Uh, actually... well, funny story—”

“Yeah, you shut uh... shut it. I just looked on over at the gifts and they’s said it, so that’s gotta be the case.”

“Marx,” Francisca warned across the carpet, softly, “stand aside and let her finish.”

“Why, did _you_ wanna go over here and continue?”

“ _Marx_.”

“Spot’s mine!”

The helmet flinched behind at the repeated words, then again after her rising ahead. Cowering back, they whined in unseen sparks once more, though more predominant area all around took occupation—in particular the gift circle by Starlow, and Gooey’s edge of the room by Marx’s new predicament.

“N—Ah!” He lurched toward Gooey, revealed only as a fakeout as his front foot plastered the same spot of the ground several times. “Ooh, what am I gonna do? How ‘bout...”

Her hand reached, and he skipped to the side, never letting his face off. Beyond her still displacement of his vision, a few presents continued shuffling around, soon the very one Marx had glanced at prior, though it was glimpsed right over.

“Over here! Then...”

Plant snapped at both edges of the room in succession, though none intended seemed to mind. Its face boiling, emitting a grumble with its tightly spawning formation of teeth, it marched its pot toward the tree, right by Starlow—still sifting with all her conscious spirit, silently—and glanced up at the barely tinted lampshade.

“Missed me!” He leaped right behind Gooey, who gave a quick nod and spun lethargically.

Her hand clenched a fist, softened barely by a repositioning of her hair.

“Marx,” she began in the calmest voice possible at the moment. “Come with me.”

“But _I_ was already over here, you ain’t get to be talkin’ with the others while it’s my turn.”

An eyelid followed the same compression and reluctant loosening. “Marx.”

“Nuh! I won right n’ tight, it’s my turn over here!”

Gooey cheered him on with a wave of his tongue, but by then it looked like she’d lost so much maybe even he could’ve seen a bit wrong with the situation. Instead, with the final wave, he obeyed her motion and let Marx free in the corner, still eyeing forward distantly, soon with a bit of a squint as the shadow continued over.

“Here it is!” a shout came of across the room. “It says it right here—BZZT!”

Despite her volume, none but the regarded name seemed to mind. A moment ahead she floated to the deserted patch of where her party once stood—left for her just a single, painted helmet for her to glance in on with the unalterable face she’d been wearing since impressions.

“Hey, wait a second,” he continued, finally left his obnoxious tones. “Where’d all my space go?”

Her hair alone snowed him to a standstill, shivering. Late night rose, somewhere beyond many clocks ticking around all evidence he’d be sure to pass up on, and by last shadow’s rising his face had warped to something never even considerable for a stature such as his own. With a cold clanking far out, confusion, trembles, and digitized faces looming from the farthest corners he might’ve seen, his mouth gaped, gasped, and struggled against coherence.

“Gooey’s nothing bad as you, you get me?”

He crouched, whimpered the first time ever, and prepared something like a scream, backed farthest into the futilest mess of blockaded eyes.

Somehow, even she jumped.

The light darted free at the world of teeth, out to a mutter of the area exposed the faintest green reflecting stubbornly off its inducer. Brought about to a single vision, it clamped again, missed, and a great wheeze broke loose, the lampshade dimming at the explosion. There was a mundane silence of the only warm glow while it simply gawked, then a poof broke everyone to the situation occurred in a whole moment.

Somewhere below, Plant returned light from behind its head, planted darkness from its position shielding the bulb.

“What do you think you’re doing! This is just a light, did it really bother you that much to need you to attack it?”

The pot clamped down again, off emerging some final quietude of the experience, yet somehow the fall seemed... almost different under the newfound wheeze—about trailing some other feeling for the moment expecting Marx to be in his momentary safety net.

The mumbling arose, a lining of sparks flying out from the only contender necessary, and the word couldn’t have been any clearer. It could’ve been the foreign speech, really, a faint hint, subtlety toward subconscious direction, something worlds toward mentioning the others without realizing. Whether even one minded them over towering transitioning of the stage just ahead the couches, it was something evident, but afterward the only sounds were a haze.

Something... like gratefulness given by winter outside, something training mixtures of calmness of distance, great gentleness of presence, something... resembling cheer, but not quite. The day wasn’t right, the sight something barely off—it only looked a bit different than whatever presumed, something like...

“ _Sparky_!” a crushed imitation emerged, Starlow’s mouth doubtlessly gaping behind any other’s inability to notice.

Glee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two dangs to share.
> 
> Ok so first dang is dang this turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be. Then second dang is double dang Plant and co. haven't seen the light of day in anything from me in about three-quarters of a year.
> 
> That is all my dangs. ~~i'll reply to anyone who says "w" back with "w" or any letter of your choosing offer valid until 2121 terms and conditions don't apply~~


	2. InVex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Assistant goes babysitting for the holidays.

By absence of his honorary caretaker—at least in ability—it’d only taken a few snaps until the hour pleaded away its frailness. It wasn’t a particularly gruesome encounter, nor auditorily restricted on either side of his steadily skewing hat, but nonetheless none seemed to mind beyond the savored hints of teeth, about begging to see unrestriction ahead of a face by looks of those leaves emulated hands.

But that was long ago, and such a while had passed it didn’t seem any bothered to mind the half-startles induced every time he slapped his foot against the inner side of the door, crying out something about how sorry he was for “sticking her”. Under the sole occasion one did—save the evident striped helmet—she simply sighed and shifted.

The face could only tick onward.

“Did you... uh, happen to care much for him?”

Magolor twisted only moments after the final word, his head sagged of its most desperate longing of the armrest again. “You mean in a general sense, or...”

An equal face seated beside him. Despite so much room standing should he lean to anywhere, the lacking gap seemed only ineffectual, seeing what unfamiliar double it was loafed beside.

“Just a while ago.”

He suddenly twitched. A hand raised to his ear, but neither seemed noticeable under Gooey mystifying all Starlow’s cast save her in the center of the rug.

“Oh, I mean... he’s...” His hands balanced the air, each topping with every time his eye winced in thought. “I mean, I get it really wasn’t the best option to be prodding so much. Y’know...”

He almost jumped, nodding at the attention. “Her?”

“Yeah.”

Gaze departed, some transfixion falling off to Gooey’s show again while the armrest saw its familiar user. So slowly, but at as much distance his face could apprehend, he twirled, his tongue somehow relatively in his mouth—seeing a drop spattered off to the only stem was something he could only hope never happened. Then, with everyone caught in his endless loop, sluggish, his pace hastened, eyes slowly helicoptering to the ceiling every other moment they could be seen among the blue tornado. Stiff as a nail, worked as a screwdriver, somehow his blinking, googly face was all it took for his spell to at least concern Plant, its head to whatever degree hypnotized.

He blinked. Turning, he rubbed his eyes, found way to the departed show of ahead—still with a tongue up high. He sighed and glanced to the clock over the corners of the couch, its numbers immeasurable under how dense his ears became to hold. It beeped something, waved a breeze over, and he soon succumbed to relaxation of his own breath against the armrest, silent.

By next he could’ve sworn his eyes were open there was an enormous scratchy ruckus, grabbing all life of his head by the insides while he jolted up. The voices were first picked, all about as warm and full as ever, and somehow he prepared to just suck up the sweat, tears, whatever it was, and fall again, even if unintentionally.

Then it came again, jumpy as himself in the moment it flashed. Even more hastily than before, his eyes burst around the room, stolen consciousness in its dwindling form, until the ground patted a few times more. In any other state, he’d have fallen to the same fear by such gentle pounding, but with how shivery, he was unfazed.

Down below, the helmet vigorously springed before him, every few seconds the only spark ever heard from it emerging in silence. For a while he could only stare, whether from eternal stirring he’d just set himself to by almost falling asleep or the lushest color he’d seen since waking—a stripe of blue on their side, a top-tipper of red to carry its stiff plug, then another blue—but regardless there was only one it called to. Whatever had happened in the last hour he’d sparked, the seat beside lay dormant.

“Uh... hey?”

They jumped again, though not in response.

His hand raised near his ears, defying his own predominant wish to be left some time for his eyes, finally, but they couldn’t bear thinking anything beyond their springing. By next couple seconds arose, he’d just about had it with the unseeable expression and flying safety hazard dangling over its back, but somehow he managed with only a giddy face.

“Sparky, was it?” he asked, verging his temper and pitch simultaneously.

They fell, finally, and shook their entire stubby head. Too close for their face to be readable behind the closest cushions beneath himself, what bits of the color could be seen almost reminded him of some distant face, yet he couldn’t pinpoint where that shake had been displayed before.

He chuckled, trying some sort of effort to look about anywhere else, but its succeeding eyes made it hard to resist for sake of politeness. They only glanced and bounded off, and by the time he’d managed another blink a blinding yellow had stimulated a wince he hadn’t heard from in at least a few minutes.

“Hey,” she said rather indifferently.

He almost got his mouth open in the meantime.

“You’re... uh...”

Her face lifted, blocking the contrary of directly beneath by a decent fixation. The question seemed obvious, and for a single moment he thought to take back those words said whenever he hadn’t been so breathless before.

“Pa—”

“Assistant, right?"

She didn’t even notice his half-syllable.

“Sure,” he answered weakly.

Starlow glided back, taking her view a moment between him and the dweller before the couch. “You’ve been hanging out over here with BZZT?”

“I’m sorry?”

She froze, save a warped expression.

“I don’t... get what you mean?”

He rubbed the rear of his head, shifting downward until only red and blue littered his skies. “Sorry, who were you talking about?”

“BZZT?”

They stared.

“Could you, uh, repeat that?”

She nudged her face toward. “B-ZZ-T,” she sounded, by syllable, yet still she only found the same scratching.

“I literally can’t hear you right now.”

She tried again, even closer, the same results imminent soon as he placed his ear forward.

“How do you spell it?”

The next minutes could’ve only been described to himself as a straggling haze.

“BZZT?” he repeated.

A final spring came, though it only took an involuntary lulling of hands to calm them.

“Okay, but who’s BZZT?”

His recurred weighting didn’t seem to find much appeasement in the helmet, and it trotted back at least a couple nudges before standing, trembling again. It was only an instant it all occurred under, but despite the noticeable distance covered, he couldn’t bother looking down.

She only nudged her face behind before the realization struck, a long-winded facepalm held captive until he held a silencing finger up.

“Sorry for that.” He looked between the two of his audience. “Both of you. I don’t get why I couldn’t piece that together.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She returned a sigh, forming her own variant of a side-glance. “I’ve been betting maybe my idea _wasn’t_ the greatest when introductions came time.”

They again stamped their position, the most glaring electrical hazard more indecisively stammering him than his long sweat. He let his eyes back—maybe rolling—deeper to his face, spelunkers of frigid breaths, and he could’ve assured himself there indeed was a passing second he didn’t shiver. Somehow he only grew more trembly, so much so he couldn’t bother to count the internal casualties, and from some mirror universe Starlow just stared.

“Hey, are you alright?”

He panted, letting a final sigh. The distance footed, warmth returned, and he managed his hands off his stomach, finally.

“Yeah.” His head burned, leading a prolonged blink. “Just a little cold, is all.”

The best emulation of shivers weren’t exactly quick in such a state, his last resort degraded all the way to an exaggerated sucking of air. Try as he wanted, the jitters he could manage only sounded pitiful.

Past his awful interpretation, she feigned a raised eyebrow.

“You sure you don’t want a blanket or something?”

His mouth opened, expecting correction and denial, only to suddenly reconsider. Somewhere above, a form clouded up, deep through his prolonged sound something like a gentle ease for his eyelids, an ultimate coziness, even a soothed hum every few seconds while he fumbled over the couch, delved into the otherworld of indestructible sleep.

By what daze he survived under he set out a shake. She squinted again.

“Alright, suit yourself.”

Silence pierced their gaze, of the outer world the only other conversation and Gooey’s enigma crying like a missile, but somehow restlessness couldn’t so much see back in. Their faces were locked—their warm mists eroding by mere lack—off anywhere but the room’s core the same stiffness enveloping.

A shared giggle of the side couch lulled him out of emulated sleep. He rubbed his eyes once more, the rest of outsides too blurry for him to much recognize the nonverbal callings repeating beneath.

“I’d best be checking in on Plant before it gets angry with someone.” She sighed, turned back to the ongoing dizziness stared by all for just the instant. “It takes just the _slightest_ breeze to upset it, I swear...”

She dropped a whisper, though she trailed the scene alone. BZZT didn’t seem to mind, at least, their repeated jumping and near-tripping over nothing, though he almost couldn’t constrain a snicker at how clumsy they were just trying to look onto the couch. Hadn’t she looked back so quickly he’d have long embarrassed himself.

“Hey,” she whispered again. “Come here.”

They trembled, cowering all the way to the couch’s support. Nuzzling it with each shake, their only expression came in the softest clinks of their cable against helmet.

“Come on,” she urged, nearing.

There was no response. It almost could’ve appeared their color splayed more rapidly in conjunction with her low floating, but he couldn’t focus himself on either without an inexplicable twitch of his eyes.

She gave up after its clanking drew Gooey’s stare—even if unintentional on both’s offer. With another pant, she flew up until level with herself of moments ago.

“Looks like it _really_ wants to stick around right here.” She grumbled, masking a drawn-out blink. “Would you mind hanging out with it for a little while? There’s no way I’ll be getting it anywhere at the moment.”

A faint spark grew under the last words. By the time she’d finally noticed only a second remained, both knew, and she exploded downward for a few soft words. He only waved at the nearer eyes, chuckling silently.

“Would you mind?”

He’d have really liked to have complained about anyone who’d have been a better babysitter, but by then his sleep was so distrusted all he could do was nod.

“Great, thanks!” She backed with a wink. “Sorry, though—”

“It’s fine.”

“Oh... well, I should be going. Nice talking to you.”

He garbled a response, and she was quick on her way for another chastisement. Betting for next words staled after maybe the first indifference of her sole audience, though all the stillness around made it simple to at least concentrate, for once.

Far as his memory spanned, none had much strayed their spots since Marx’s exile—at least for the ones that still remained. The air was bleak enough to cough on command, probably, and the only light came of the corner, despite glaring odds of green eyes digitized. Green, again... he’d probably do best eating something. Not particularly in the case he was hungry, but... just not to start seeing things again.

He stood, steps backing in a scurry, though he almost tripped regardless. The culprit stammered its helmet beneath, though what for his guess was probably about as good as Starlow’s. Sighing, he staggered toward the door, the carpet shifting sides per trailing foot, though he couldn’t care much with the desire of meat on mind.

“Would you mind grabbing the others on your way out?” Francisca called, barely snagging him from the doorway. “It’s about time for the unwrappings.”

With a hand outstretched off the couch, her face ambiguous as Susie’s seated behind her, he could only wave back, unintentionally calling his pursuer along.

A mumble called outside, and he finally took notice of his bumped head. It didn’t so much sting as it did pressure, lingering, scribbling some confusion over his face as the cabinet stared back into him. He looked down, likely in recoil, but he couldn’t tell. A tiny clock littered the platform, too indistinguishable to decipher from such a position, and for a moment he truly considered glancing into it.

One hand forward, toward the impossible realm of a pressed, yet indifferent dining table, and he nearly fell back. Under a meek mumble he saw a shadowy helmet, and he burned a second attempt of his energy, only to ready his own collapse again. The spark repeated, jolting him upright, and he waved a regard to its relative direction, starting again. Instead, there came another crushed clamor. He murmured a thanks, only to finally lose his balance after the next sound.

“Lemme outta here!”

It’d already reached the door, fizzling away the silence.

“‘Ay, Sparky!” he called, his tone muffled in volume only. “That you out there?”

A longer crackle sounded, tingling his ears. The first tear guided him off to a blurry door.

“Yeah, I hear ya’. Look, I need help in here! You saw what happened, right? F—uh...”

While Marx stammered on a sound, the door’s vision had dwindled from the nearings. His head fell to his only follower, who still stared with its unalterable tremble.

“Francisca! What’s-her-name, she locked me in here, n’ now I’m stuck! C’mon, let me some leverage over here!”

It shivered, barely missing quietude. The door trembled again, probably in impatience of the whole two or so seconds he waited from behind, then it blurted the same nonsense he was after. Above a last shiver, a little, determined squint, his hand hovered, cold and pale.

A familiar step flew up, and immediately he could see the greatest gratitude in the lack of hands it held. He uttered an urge, something along an instinctive dismissal, and the hall stilled. The under opening of the door blew a whisper.

“Assistant? You out there, too?”

“Uh—”

“Yeah, how ‘bout _you_ get the door. I don’t see Sparkster over here getting it like I asked ‘im to.”

BZZT jittered at the word, regardless how improper. Beyond the wood, he waived his opportunity what looked half another second before whining again, and again he spectated whatever futile attempt to maybe headbutt the tip of the door hinge. Whatever the reason, its faintest tilting brought only cries to his head, whether from that awful voice or frost, he couldn’t let the stinging go.

At least his vision remained clear enough, and after some imperceptible count of its bounding he tried a soft ease of it, a gentle sway of hand to quiet down its stamping once and for all, but Marx wasn’t having any of it. With each grunt managed he only cheered behind his barrier, something general more likely than not. Then, by miracle, it finally stumbled over itself, its face was so strayed toward the door, and it looked back to him, a sighing hand barely placed in time before a call again.

Time told—it only worked itself, straying his own interpretation of nonexistent sweat every time it switched sides. One word and it turned back to him, dizzy swirls formed the duo of its expression again, only for an indistinguishable grunt to signal it back, churning its energy away at the attempts useless to everything. Somehow, despite his frigidness, he could only await the impending doom of the door opening.

It tripped.

“C’mon!” he repeated in incessancy.

A hand waved its compromised eyes back.

“Don’t worry about him,” he finally said, sighing. “He shouldn’t be let out of there.”

“Huh? Thought I heard something ‘bout—”

It was truly a miracle he managed to notice the new footsteps’ parting, much less their existence.

“Hey, wait! You didn’t finish! C’mon, Sparky!”

The same face stumbled at the word, but he just patted it along again, nudging every word from its back until the only voice heard had dwindled to a coughing.

The kitchen was an entire alternate universe from last he recalled. The table, still glorified in its only delicious feat, stood the same—indifferent—to the nothingness, the openness, whatever it deemed under weighty silence. His ears were the only thing sensing the urge, vibrating, twisting out their own positions, but a double-check downward revealed BZZT the very same, albeit in its entire body. Just a step was a sound of thunder in the verging space, so all could be done was hope he’d stay put.

One of his hands leaped off the table immediately after passing, jolts behind responding. Sooner than he’d reminded himself who was even sleeping, he gave an abrupt shush, gentle as he could make it under the air, but it at least got the job done. Under the faintest clacking of wire both soon gawked at his shifting—every hand in view under reign of motion, some falling beside his head, soon his clear face.

Another sigh managed, he moved again, an urgent flailing following behind to the next hall. Past a sudden warmth, he scratched his head, blurred his vision, and nearly tumbled into a wall again. Both jolted in tandem.

“S-Sorry,” he said, hands lifted before his face.

From the greatest angle its helmet could crane, it didn’t look it could see how hard his face was burning. Shaving its remainder of face from view, he stuttered indistinctly, jointly with the group of nothingness paved the shattering light forward. For a second he just stared, the sole door looming of the side, ahead bringing the sound of faint crackling, invisible sparks if he’d ever known them. He looked back to the following plug almost intuitively.

He didn’t bother much for the note made, passing the door into the next room of equal light. The first corner of alternate sight brought a shield to his eyes, a blinding blink surfaced of the distant traveler standing before him. His hand shook loose, a great stare from him to his palm brought to a standstill until what must’ve been a second passing.

“Hey.”

His hand dropped a wave, if only barely. BZZT peeked from behind him.

“Jeez, when did it get so bright around here?”

Magolor looked confused in the able moment. “I haven’t noticed a difference myself.”

Past the eternal blinding flash, his fingers groped somewhere to their content, and he plumped down to the couch—risking a place as an armchair should it lose a couple fingers’ widths. A hollow thudding trailed with mild delay, leading to the same bounding and stopping, though with much shorter duration. Under an unassuring recollection of his very seat in prior, he almost could’ve pieced back the exact voices he’d not long ago from out that entry door.

“What’ve you been up to?” he said, dismissing the coating of his eyes.

Six or something faint sparks sounded from the side, then he lost count under the dullness. He scrunched his face, rubbed an eye, and winced under the blazing sunrise.

A brighter breath finally broke. “Here, have a look.”

He exempted himself from his spot with an internal whimper, slogging off to whichever corner he’d probably been called to. Another tiresome wheeze, and by next blink the little robot just couldn’t faze him anymore.

“Looking in fine shape, about now.”

His fingers splayed over his face, pitching some shivering around again. “Yeah, what is it?” he sighed.

“Well, here—”

Magolor stood, finally, grinding the spherical body beside him to the ground to let himself rise. Standing aside, he simply watched, two varyingly attentive glimpses added toward him as his pride in a blank stare amounted to all stillness.

Chuckling inaudibly, he groped around the perfectly level screen until reaching the stubby knob to the side, in which he then snagged it back. A foot drooped.

“It was just working a moment ago,” he mumbled, likely intention quickly lacking from his audience.

He dropped the hand carried, and the form immediately leveled. Scrunching his hands to his chest, in the next moment he tapped its extended, metallic headwear—almost like a backward beetle horn, fused to its carrier, though it at the same time looked it could slip off and be worn by any spheric fellow looking to. 

“Alright.” He glanced down to the expressionless gaze, then back to spectators. “So you’ve probably seen this... robot standing around in the living room for a little while already.”

A minute flew, then a spurt shook him somehow awake. Providing attention in a wave, he could only hope the tiniest peek into the helmet behind was enough of a thanks for the wake-up.

“I found it a while ago—oh, I think wrecked near some crashed pod? Anyway, I decided to take it in, and with some time to spare here, I’ve been tinkering around with it. Hadn’t been getting anything much going, but as _soon_ as you guys come in, it starts to show some life.”

He chuckled to an awkward air. One look into any’s face and he’d have doubtlessly quieted himself.

“Maybe it just needed a robot buddy to get going?” he said, an implicit face eyeing behind.

He spun back, again met with the flashy, yet dull stripes over its helmet. Under a nonexistent flicker of the face before, it could only tremble, expression bolted to the floor.

“Oh!—Sorry for the assumption. Just thought... ‘cause of that plug and all.”

Its eyes barely managed against the vibrant breeze. Helmet wobbling without it, BZZT managed a rushed nod.

“Or... you are?”

He swayed back, the grounds somehow stilling in silence as he gazed in on Magolor’s attempt in understanding head motions and the sporadic spurt. A crept sputter later, it looked he was already growing restless of the lacking means of communication.

“You _are_ a robot.”

It nodded.

“Well... today I learned.” He raised his face, eyeing it with one set of knuckles. “You’re Lil’ Sparky, right?”

It stiffened. Moments slogged, somewhere distant he could’ve assured himself there wasn’t a set of boundings again, and even Magolor’s robot gazed into BZZT with its own bleak expression—albeit only due to its prior orientation.

The shake couldn’t have been any less clear, yet still he almost couldn’t expel his absentminded breath.

“It’s BZZT,” he almost whispered.

Probably both robots stared into him, he looked so pale.

“You okay?” Magolor asked, hushing the cramp instantly. “There’s a couch right here if you need—”

“N-No, I’m fine.”

He dismissed a hand forward, flopping it down before realizing he hadn’t let any command out. He tried again with the wave, though with the stares soon mixed around, he could hardly even twitch his fingers.

Magolor’s side-eye pierced with remarkable intent, but otherwise he was feeling as warm as ever. One his hands unwittingly took the opportunity of stinging heat.

“What was I doing?”

“Showing your...” He nudged his fingers toward the still unmoving robot. “Thing.”

One glance, and his eyes jolted back to a gape. “Oh, right! Sorry about the delay, I’ll just... get back to this.”

Intuitively, he slid back over to his position as sentry, BZZT immediately sneaking back best it could behind him. Subconsciously, he at least recognized how worthless it was while half its entire body still lay in visibility between himself and the ground, but as long as it meant certainty.

“Uh... well, I...” A hand reached to his head and rubbed, several times passing as his glance slithered downward. “I don’t really have anything else to talk about with it.”

He grumbled under his own exhaustion, the mistake realized too late to withdraw.

“Think I saw something ‘round the lines of ‘XM’ in there, actually? In its name, I’d assume.” He sighed to himself. “Or... ‘L86’?” he muttered.

Magolor waved any hint of expression off him.

“Eh. I’ve got some more work to do, and I wouldn’t suspect you guys would be too keen on watching me press some buttons on this bud for a good hour or something.” He stifled something like a choke, then shrugged. “Unless...”

The word hung, as his sparsely wobbly finger. Again, he let it back beneath his face—breaking a shattering shiver coinciding with BZZT’s own—then sagged. Everyone stared at the robot.

“Nevermind.”

The same side-space of the couch was presently reoccupied. In another world of sparking quietude, the motion was merely indifferent, due to such a browse he wasn’t capable of himself—regardless whether he was eyeing the back of his own robes miscolored. The silence was a wonderful thing, he’d have liked to admit, the party... scant.

By next sound it was BZZT taken the place of that other bot, if only a bit strayed nearer himself. Comparing heights by distrust and peripheral vision, sure, they were about equal in stature and maybe eye formation, though the mirror broke around there. What remained was just himself, of course, and Magolor—clones, reflections more than anything, yet him and a helmet at least held mutual in the unfamiliarity regard.

A pair of eyes scrunched a word he couldn’t comprehend, startling him.

“You... need something?”

He stuttered over the simplest remark, struggling to find a remainder in mind of something about a couch, maybe. The sole steps darted behind him upon first sound, an endless abyss left in its wake until he could only hold his head, it was so strong.

The headache passed as merely a split, and only finally could he remember that blue hair.

“Oh, yeah,” he began, rubbing his cheek with his knuckles. “Francisca said someth—that we should, uh, head back over to the main room. I think it’s time for the presents but...” He murmured, trying a groan. “Not sure. She just said to come back.”

“Already?”

Magolor leaned far as he could from his grounded position, attempting a peek through the hall, though the best it looked he managed was a pair of green eyes and its void.

“What time is it?”

“Eleven-something, I think.”

Magolor froze, almost collapsed, then readjusted himself to lean against the wall. “When was it Starlow finished with introductions?”

“I can’t even remember,” he said, shaking, peeking toward the floor.

Magolor fell limp. A hand broke to his forehead, then he simply sat, his only possession staring beside him with perfect expressionlessness.

“That has to have been hours.” His hand dropped to his imaginary lap, and he peered up, a sort of principle achieved for how smooth and slow he managed. “I... I’ve been sitting over here, with my hands... mindless, for _hours_.”

The wall was struck by the same back, and at last all faced the floor. Even if only a moment—and to varying degrees and intents—but he could only stare, awaiting the perfection to spawn suddenly, the grace of an articulation to form, just one squeak to reassure himself with. It had to have been _something_ never too much to ask for, but the holidays really didn’t seem too cut with whatever static shock he’d been witnessing from some other perspective.

He finally fell to stiffness the same, even long after the first footstep adventuring forward into the frozen world. In a blinding bob, BZZT just stared as equal, as indifferent as could manage in ever, the whole color of blue unfazing it to another plant forward. Suddenly one broke the chains, transfixed into the only one about level with himself until snapping back from his own robot and taking the glance. Forward, it was just another pair of eyes.

His hand reached, abruptly out of the loop just embodied them both. A quiet whine broke back, retreating behind himself again, and with some newfound nonexistence to spare, a silent word entered their staring session.

“It’s now, I think.”

Magolor let his gaze wander for seconds. “Okay.”

They both stood. In another blink, they nodded in decent tandem, a sole onlooker blazing its own bright eyes to the sky, then they all filed out, a pale green left their only reminder of an uncertain lamp.

By what anomaly had just phased past, the kitchen looked a miracle. The aroma first wheezed over both pairs of ears, lulling them to an equal doze, and in transcendent levels of coordination their glances fell to the turkey. There, beyond an endless stack of hands, head, and hair, stood the most dully colorful, enthralling hunk of a meal he, at least, could’ve ever seen in the doozy of a daze—drool-inducing to the point of rivaling even Gooey.

But the prize swayed its conditions before, the whole hallucinatory list far too wordy to bother enjoying it at the moment. With the ever-escalating threat of a snore to also contend with, the task at hand was revitalized in a matter of maybe seconds since coming in.

BZZT already looked overwhelmed at the sight of Taranza’s slumber, trembling with its almost signature pattern and frequency. He almost signaled a quiet motion above, though with the blank stare plunged into his own deepness, he couldn’t let much of a motion off. Slow as he didn’t need be, he crept along, the final spurt finally easing another stepping behind at around an equal pace. Just a few seconds more, and everything would look fine—more than tense, but nonetheless fine—but Magolor simply didn’t care.

“Huh?” Taranza croaked, struggling his head up.

In the frozen state they were in, him and his longest escortee lay in frail capability’s hands, the seat gazed through and past soon having its revival of life aboard its waking host. Rubbing his eyes, the majority else of Taranza’s hands fell limp to the table, save a sole strayer that decided to slouch against the chair cushion, soon the empty breeze.

“Hey,” Magolor called, a low voice to accompany his presence. “Sorry to wake you.”

Taranza mumbled something, likely interrupting the imminent words.

“It’s time for the gathering. Coming up in about...” He eyed back, around to the level face he was looking for, though there wasn’t a word. “Starting soon.”

He squinted, stretched all his hands out to the skies of the ceiling, and took a long yawn. His faint breath sounded for a time none could’ve been bothered to notice, and with a plop of his hands, he released a hasty sigh to leave it all off. Blocking his face with palms again, he nodded, stood, and silently yawned again.

Someone took the lead of the trail behind—whether grounded or not he couldn’t bother to check—and again he started to the hall. A bump came upon the rear tip of their file rounding the corner, but by then he was so lacking the need wasn’t felt to look to who. Maybe with a plug himself he wouldn’t get so tired, sometimes...

Through the doorway, the only one not to stare was Gooey, though his lacking reasoning was evident. The air suddenly weighted upon entry, a bit warmer than out, even straying stuffy, though the oncoming sweat was the greatest relaxation he’d ever had in the past hour or whatever. The destination of a couch was only imminent, anyway.

Francisca’s glance followed, pushed all the way until he inexplicably turned. The breeze whizzed by, a hollow reluctance soon making him quiver at all turning to the ground before. It was sooner he was left back to himself on the couch, and for a single moment he could finally take in the sight of where he’d just abandoned so long. Maybe not for good intent, but at very least he’d be able to get some sleep, soon.

Beyond another self-inflicted dizziness at a red jacket, it was almost unbelievable the same pink quietude situated so stiff on the opposite seater. Packed alongside her anomalistic presence was maybe the fuzziest, warmest embodiment of comfort and coziness resting over her lap. It was a good deal wider than herself, even greater than what looked she was capable of holding in such a position, though nonetheless Susie sat, resting her head over her pillow, stroking its back just softly as he only continued distorting out its frail breathing.

It would’ve seemed just right himself, too, to just nap off the time again, but any look into any else fortified his wakefulness—be it Gooey’s blindingly close, rolling glimpse, or even the almost pleading eye of a shivering ahead. The papers scrunched off to the side, none but a random few bothering to glance over at the short ruckus of tongue-flailing, but there was just a sigh to inevitably call him upright.

“Give me a moment,” Francisca said, starting out the doorway.

The word just about coincided with her concealment around the corner. Being likely one of the farthest from the polar voices, it was doubtless most else who bothered could hear Marx’s standpoint on the situation. Somehow his audience remained only a mumble, though it hardly mattered even to the spectators.

A likely line of words trailed her indifference as she reappeared, took her place ahead of the longer couch’s nearer armrest. Though garbled behind nothing, his rambling could at least be noted in intent.

“Greetings, everyone,” she began. She cleared her throat, then stroked her hair. “Around ten or so minutes lie until tomorrow, the standard day of festivities.”

He almost expected another word to be blurted out, only to be interrupted by a mental pelt of a scrunched napkin. Taranza side-eyed him from relatively behind her.

“I knew few of you coming into this day. Though I expected...” Her head shifted downward. “...mixed results, stemming from some then-unidentified faces, it has been a great—”

Plant snapped forward, suddenly, leaves curled up to perfectly emulate fists of ferocious impatience. The same two of its condensed group along the back wall shook upon the motion, though Francisca only stared as it was again chastised. She was let an apologetic glimpse between whispers.

“It has been—”

It ignored Starlow and lashed out again. Facing the same words, it took an entire dragging of Shy Guy to at least settle it—and that was discounting the quaking encouragement from beside.

She cleared her throat again, then hummed a single tone. Though enough to induce a shiver of him, her only regard lay on silence.

“It has been a great pleasure to meet many of you here today. In an especial regard, I’d like to give a sincere thanks to Starlow and her party for joining us. However long you wish to stay, it was an extremely considerate deed to visit.”

“Aw, thanks!” Starlow lifted a foot and winked to the crowd—predominantly Francisca, though it regardless reached the entirety of the room. “It’s been nice to see so many new faces, and hey!—I couldn’t say no to an invitation.”

Immediately, he shifted back to the same quiet array of hands, both already meeting for a stare in mutual confusion. Taranza returned to her back a moment, letting him all a shrug before he continued shivering against the wall. Surely, he’d known of how lacking, how inviting they’d been, too, and more predominantly their feigned attitudes... whoever had sent them.

“I don’t wish to delay this time for those of you expecting it.” She faced upward, finally, and her eyes opened to blankness all around. “I do need assistance in distributing the gifts, however.”

Sluggish as her pace had been seen in the few times past, one blink of the blurry field around had warped her all the way to the ornate tree. Already, she was scanning the view around, searching a prey amongst the unsuspecting care she was letting in her quiet, genuine disconcern, though the only thing daring to move was a spotted head.

Magolor raised his hand limply from his corner, and strayed forward until a moment ahead—bisecting the distance of himself and Francisca. She nodded, seated herself against the opposite end of his couch, and blinked to the rest of the world again. Despite first action from them both, only a calm, cool blue had attained what little remained of his weariness, delving him into the deepest transfixion to a simple hair color.

Though interrupted a few times on sporadic poundings and floppings of drool, the presents were sorted through rather simply. There was just something subconscious was holding from him all the while until he’d somehow glance up from her head, the process something like her hand reaching out, often to the farthest pack or bag in vision, and snagging it to eye the ceiling for a moment while she handed it off to her messenger. It was all fine, even past the first box thumping silently beside him to a new attention, all, it looked, until the final bits, obscured behind his couch.

Magolor took the next box with his innocent stare—a bit on the large side, though nothing unhandleable. Swishing it all around in his grip, eyeing each side for the inevitable wording, he could only stop at the unintelligible mess seen from a seated’s perspective.

“Uh...” He mumbled something, nabbing Francisca’s attention only unintentionally, it looked. “Sorry, uh... nothing.”

His chuckle was brief, but it reverberated the entire time he dispatched it off beside BZZT’s absentmindedness, singeing to long after he continued his services. Until the next delivery was shipped to his own couch just a hand’s reach away, it reigned mind to an overload of blank quietude, though it still didn’t cut echoes there.

Though dozing through the majority of it, each box, bag, and package ever slightly alleviated the sighing weight of such the inducement, conjoined to a rainbow by next bound recognizable. Even disregarding the few stragglers yet to be sorted, the environment all around had shifted to a masterpiece before a blink or a dozen—regardless what sort, it was something bizarre, yet deeply warming. However long ago, he’d had his first expectation, a faded remnant of disputes amongst the peaceful crowd, shouts built to some level of vexation, though the only survivors were cool and distant, if there at all.

Off on her long lonesomeness, Susie watched with an expression unaltered as ever could be displayed, yet with her pillow in the most tempting position could’ve been dreamed, she held interest. Taranza, though surely fretful of something, couldn’t hold his neutrality when seeing his small accumulation build beside, soon to a mound, soon to a short spire—albeit only by a single, towering box set in its ideal position. Gooey, Shy Guy, BZZT, he himself couldn’t speak down of the ever-shiver induced by temperature solely, a calmest ease just to be seeing each other in some sort.

In an assortment of ways, he too could see the lacking faces, but some... discontinuity kept him from a stillness. Nothing of the sole growing distrust of the same eyes prior, nothing even physical, for that matter, but on some one-off elevation he couldn’t help but continue missing the word for it all. Perfect, but not quite so steep. A bit... touching, but not so close. In all the ways, he could only forget it, but as soon as the least likely beast of them all let off its masked mumble, it came.

And it fizzed as soon as it’d been heard, as near as the helmet right beside.

Magolor hurried over to the scene, abandoning his short trove aboard a couch. Some glanced over behind haze, but he was too lured himself to notice much more than Gooey’s scooting, circling the area as best he could.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, face down, almost as if speaking to a child.

BZZT crackled weakly, then lifted a foot toward the largest box of the bunch—evidently dominating the entire room by sheer size alone, though its departments were in no ways limited. Decorated all around, its paper was a one-of-a-kind, holding dark figures, light mysteries, something big, something almost like a cosmic cog, even what looked a trash can if didn’t rub his eyes to fix it. On its own, it could’ve passed, but the situation seemed obvious.

“Oh, need help with that? Here, I can walk you through it.”

He dragged the box over the half-moment he could without bumping someone, though there was only another cry. With a deepened, silent view, he chuckled, trembly, and lugged back the sole other gift previously beside, only to receive the same inarticulateness.

“So, uh...”

“Wait!”

Starlow’s motion alone looked enough for his jolt, so it was a miracle he didn’t lose his breath again.

“Hold on, I don’t think it’s asking any assistance.”

He whimpered a sign of confusion, left only scuttling to the rear wall in the midst of a new company all around.

“That’s not a helpless spark, if I ever knew it.” She lowered herself, reaching about level to stand on its plug if she slid a moment forward. “What’s going on?”

The same pitch repeated, and it waddled to the largest one—an enormous antenna sticking straight through the top of the doodly packaging. Circling it a few times, it made a slightly higher echo, not even a face required to call Shy Guy to its side. Mumbles and jolts were spread through the room, through moments, through minutes, and soon enough he lost himself behind one of the final sways of red.

With a coordinated word of each, a foot and a pair of stubby arms, the box was driven to their simultaneous forward, several of their grunts recoordinating the few lost stares back from blankness to the immense effort on display. Stamps were given, familiar confusions and silent encouragements in her quiet look, and finally Plant just marched over, bit the antenna to a standstill, and flung a glob of spit out toward the two workers. BZZT immediately scrambled, though nevertheless, a foot swept out, and the gift dropped level to the floor, the tag exposed.

Magolor stood, having just witnessed everything from the closest point, and went off to the tapping foot of the ground. The helmet backed, slowly as could be with Shy Guy to reorientate it the couple times its cable almost bumped something, leaving the very name in tow for him to see again.

“Oh, was... this the wrong address?” He rubbed his head with a sort of disappointment at the words being spoken, only to soon jolt. “I mean—uh, person?”

There came a stubby nod, though he was too distracted to notice, or so much care to. The expression raged on, a silence all around to back his automaticity, yet it took a fleeting eternity for Starlow to finally investigate herself. Judging by her immediate parallels, it looked she was just as confused as him.

She turned upright with a sort of apologetic face. “So any of you around here named ‘Lil’ Sparky’?”

Out only was quietude and many listless eyes. He, alongside a few others known only by conjecture, followed gaze around the room, searching something to rest the case so—at least for himself—unwrapping could commence, but there only saw nothingness.

He’d about prepared to groan and sigh at the unremarkability of the enveloping prison, only for a mumble to start breaking the silence. It was sooner he’d noticed, but it was so quiet it looked only himself and BZZT could detect the stubby little hopping, the exaggerated pointing toward a familiar, yet distant facelessness in the corner. There came only shivers, whether due more to himself or whoever he couldn’t bother with, but soon was an astonishment—a leveling spark. Two were hopping, then finally Taranza glanced up from his doze to see the same situation, and he let a weak whimper himself. The silence suddenly grew quiet in itself, the reminder quick to form around the room’s cast entirely, and the finale soon dawned over everyone.

BZZT was the first to reach him, somehow managed to slide the antenna-clad gift all the way over under all else’s obliviousness. Following was his prior protector, staring down to the same red jacket of before, and soon many more, though they stood only as onlookers. Shivery, disconcerned, whatever his standpoint on his sole present given only by mistake, the boy only sat, confused. In the midst of a final quiver of himself, he prepared to go collapse himself in the corner, where none but Gooey could ever see—all his absentmindedness had to have inevitably led to something—but the first hint of a whisper offset him.

There were suddenly initial traces of a face, but by then the most concerned was the only helmet he stared into, a deep, inexpressive green gaze to back up his claim to nothingness. With a trembly lip, a dear intent on shivers, he let his tongue to the world before, albeit barely, only to shut, blink several times in succession, and try again, a similar blankness soon returning to unease by his own doing.

“P-P... zit?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 9:48 PM on Christmas Eve as of the writing of this sentence. I've already spent my time with others and whatnot for the holidays, done the present shenanigans too, and I just finished all else of the process for posting this chapter—all I have left are these end notes.
> 
> So the last room featured here, the one where everyone is given their presents, was based off a common Christmas locale from my years past, at a relative's. Turned out I was going there instead of another relative's I'd expected, and during the gift time, I guess I can say it restored at least _some_ memories to me, one especially important regarding my whole venture into the writing world. In almost the same position I'd been for the presents, three years ago on this same day, I unwrapped my New 3DS XL for the first time. Even still, I can remember my voice and otherworldly excitement at the gift.
> 
> To this day, it still remains one of my most played consoles. Maybe favorite, too. To an extent, I even imagined a few characters here into the room I'd just been in hours ago, though it's already fuzzy who, when, and where. Maybe BZZT, after its such long period stashed away in my mind solely (not really), probably Assistant, but whoever, I did have some time well-spent.
> 
> It's now 9:56, Slimy Spring Galaxy is playing in my headphones, and it's time for me to go to bed.


	3. Misstep March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shy Guy goes looking for cleaning supplies and accidentally time travels.
> 
> Oh, yeah, and New Year's and stuff.

A sudden image’s will, a spattering of forks among the easiest warmth, and all was left alone and asleep, again. It’d tired, no more voices to drown out the already enthralling comfort zone, the single room holding such a grand tree, but lay so calmed, as if he could reach out, snag a portion of the air as his own secondary blanket, and sigh beside his favorite green eyes, relegate himself to a lump over its cold plating.

He was already awfully sleepy, too. Whether like some of the other drooped eyes, there were some questions to be held in regards to parallels, but no need for such a worry. None of the most ferocious beast looming over any moment to break the stillness, or, while dreading the faint thought, fix it—when the time inevitably cracked—hardly so much a word possible among the endless array of stiffness and softeners. Just a shattered frame of a kind to see, off with his only wanted cohort, off with its undoubtedly indecisive stance on the wanderer before, but he couldn’t dare shiver on the thought of lonesomeness.

Above, their guardian sagged again. Immediately, he felled a step toward the stripes’ rear, accidentally planted over the cable a moment before there came the corresponding crack. The glance wasn’t long, but it was certainly confused.

There wasn’t any trace of a word. Sighing, again, he circled his point, turned toward the stillness formed all behind before laying his eyes to their sag. Before even then, he was sifting back through his array of mumbles, jointed hands to a twiddling, facing some unearthly landscape still sitting so softly. Presents spattered the deserted carpet. Beyond them, the couches and edges of the rug stood hollow, cold mists in lack of their lively inhabitants of prior. The farthest, corner lampshade served only a meek illumination to slog the moments along—lagging even in itself.

Both turned, soon as an unrecognizable trio toward the door. It was only brief, as quiet as could be without tingling, though the googly face was an astonishment. The spark of one, a wake-up of another, the farthest back flashed their hat back down, returning to shivers as the new face slithered near. With a sole creep, he almost whined, and took a single bound toward the gray robes still hovering silently, wrapping as much as he could around for the best certification against the new monstrosity gleaming its dangly tongue over its own head. By next he looked back, his companion had already fallen to its wrath.

He couldn’t bear imagine anything beyond the first drop of spit, the pillow he held was so squished. It... was horrifying, whatever had been seen. It couldn’t have been a sight otherwise, his unwaked self told—among a midst of glitter, the still slobbered tip of an antenna beside, the tongue lifted its helmet into breaking point of last balance, a wobble of its entire body forming as he could hardly imagine it trying to stand. All the while, he could only tremble.

By the next fleet of air signaling the gooey monster’s leaving, there was left only a mumble to continue. First nervous, then awkward, a hand tapped his back, pointed his face off to the new eternity where the same plug still stood, the underside of its helmet dribbling.

Really, he’d have at least expected it to have been tipped over.

Nevertheless, nothing could’ve affected its endless grimace at the such stickiness of its plating. For what looked—and quite likely was—the first ever it decided to restrain some sparks, the drowned helmet could only summon a welling inside. Almost, he felt he could collapse and hold his own stomach until the night fell, it was so disgusting.

“Hey, uh...” He winced upon the next drop spawning for the floor, BZZT staring with an inward disgust. “Could you get something to clean this up? Some paper towels or something, just... please, this doesn’t—”

Another plop startled everyone.

“Please, hurry,” he said in the calmest tone manageable, ushering a backhand toward the doorway.

He had no idea what responsibility the voice had just undermined for him, but any look into his cohort would’ve proved more than enough, regardless. With a stumble to substitute a wave, he snagged the corner, a last look through the only mask that could’ve saved himself from the rampaging drool, and hurried off to the kitchen, only hoping an encounter wouldn’t be necessary.

A single step to the new carpet, and something screamed of beside. He fell, shuddery, compressed immediately around the doorway’s corner, a shallow mutter signaling a sudden shift in the airy warmth every spot but his. By what should’ve been a miracle, the enigma of beside hurried out a lightening in tone, something vaguely more muffled than before, but so distant, so monstrous in whatever its appearance behind the door keeping it locked away, he could only whimper.

The world darkened to a sole candle, all around existing only an increasingly cramped enthrallment, idling until the inevitable glance. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shake off a bit of sweat strayed beyond his robes, much less the motion in itself. He couldn’t lose a single tear like so many of the dark wisps all around kept begging of him, he couldn’t so much see the narrow light enveloping so deeply, a lush shape of purple formed right beyond—if only ever he could look past a hand.

“Hey, you okay?”

Only then, in that single instant the calmest familiarly nourished him enough strength, willpower, and eased attitude could he finally seek refuge out of the already forgotten habitat—not just forgetting it by departure, but entirely shattering its any remnants after the one face he could’ve hoped for.

The gaze was neutral, if anything. Behind her, several others crowded the table, a cold stamping ringing some forgotten shiver.

“I thought you were hanging out with BZZT?” She floated ahead, taking a full-eye of the decorated tree’s deserted aura in the adjacent room. “No?”

Ahead, behind, the jitters said nothing in themselves—physically, more importantly. He struggled half a string, maybe a single corner of a sentence, but there was hardly a thought trailing.

Only the next clank, louder, made any sort of attempt at effort. In the span of an instant, he blurted out his deepest contractions of mind, long after the sound had been whittled the words still ringing as just a muddled mumble.

“Oh, need something to clean with?”

He nodded, with verbal approval.

“Sure, I bet I could help you with that.” She returned to her immediate prior position, give or take a step’s span. “I’d like to ask _why_ you seem to need it, but I’m sure you have your reasons.”

She called simply, and he followed, taking a single bound to maintain pace. In much indifference, it looked, she gave an eye to the table’s crowd, the one, milky hand that bothered hardly waving back. Sputters by each step, he stumbled along the line of her shadow, a headache reigning solely in appearance.

Just past the border of the dining table and the kitchen, her presence halted. One more step and he more than likely would’ve flopped to his face.

“My best bet would be around here, somewhere, but I can’t say for certain on anything. What’d you need, anyway?”

She turned her face, lowering, while even more voices spattered the warm light behind.

“Well, you can try, but don’t expect a miracle.” She suddenly hovered out of grounded vision, staring deeply into the opposite hall and its beyond. “If you don’t find any luck, there’s still that other room to check. Though, I’d be wary of possible dust or rot in there, I don’t think that doorknob’s been touched for ages.”

With only a corner of yellow left to savor her voice, he trembled, raising a hand to the desertion of forward. However long, his feet stayed cold, limp, almost resentful to keep him aloft, if not outright too stiff to think so. In a meager glance, the spoken hallway stood, as clear and open as the one time he’d have ever hoped to see it.

A single word burned his back, and he muttered inwardly, stamping off to the cupboards seen just a moment ago. In its place, then, as its direct guardian, he almost could’ve assured himself that _was_ the exact spotted head seen, its wiry stem, its spotless pot of unrivaled mobility. He could’ve reenvisioned such a bright shade of green to coincide, something like a great tint of confusion plastered over its otherworldly face, but at least it all resided in a memory.

It was only a distortion, anyway—he’d long stuck with the very stem, even literally on many occasions—all putrefying his own daring to consider a companion such a thing until the first true recollection of the brown shadow. He almost bumped it, one misstep he was sure subconsciously glad for, and in an almost confused expression, he turned up. There, vaguely churning the toaster and blender sitting behind such an enormous head, stood a blank, soft disapproval, as much terror in its missing grin as a forgotten plant could somehow bestow.

By an instant, the loudest cry had already burned throughout the room, all doubtless stares left to only watch as he hopped, higher than ever believed before, stared a whole second into the silent face, and exploded down to refuge of the hall. Regardless how dusty, how vaguely grimy the tip of the cold surface was, the doorknob was groped beyond thought of hesitation, slamming shut with strength unrivaled to any feat his own.

Minutes passed and gawked before he finally faced the door, the only protection from the outer wilds where two wanderers lurked—stalking the halls. With a quick few hops, the darkness molded to some vague shapes, and a hand glimpsed the doorknob. For the moment it lasted, he sighed with some ease of security, only to glance back in a sudden twist. Just as he’d remembered, it’d been locked. The room stood, misty.

Though how blinding it was—even with his mask—he shivered toward the center of the spacious closet. Without the corruption of light, there served no assurance of a safe step inside, not when triple-checking each shaped shadow among the ground, but the best of the situation stood unrivaled; with only darkness, all needed to be accounted for was silence. That, of course, discounted regards of self-missteps, but if staying loyal to himself, there was no other truth.

The first corner was more dusty than it was deep. With hardly a strain of grip, he could wash away any such web or dustball emerged from the hollowness, though the fact it _was_ so packed forced to concur otherwise. A flat, pale surface stood amongst the bottom of all the mess, and, beyond a blinding absentmindedness, his shoe swung forward, accumulating an enormous chunk of dense gray in its destruction.

He immediately thrashed the affected foot, stamping it over and over, tiny bits of lint falling off as a crawly native finally awoke, scuttled upright. Upon its first view, the poor spider was met with a yelp, a raise of its already limp surface, then its doubtless last moment in view of a mask’s pallor. At last, he smashed his foot down, all its legs spreading, gliding across the room until collapsing to a heap near its edge. It struggled for stability amongst its perfectly intact form, then limped off to the next corner, inducing mumbles by every step.

It’d disappeared by his last creep, the moment of panic residing for maybe a sweat droplet to exist before he tripped in the darkness. His free foot ringing, arms too dizzy to begin groping over the cold surface, the pain throbbed for seconds as he stared into the deepest pitch, silently whimpering at every breeze brushed along.

After all was dismissed back to ringing silence, he stretched, felt a few strands of carpet with whichever foot hadn’t been so mindless. Limping back, he readjusted his mask strap, complained to himself, and finally took an inspection of the core culprit. Hardly so much a distinct face, as far as he was concerned, behind the abyss leading from the door, through paddings of dust and murky air, out from the equally messed grains and whatnot composing the stale basis of a floor, protruded a low, octagonal figure, leveled no higher than his chest.

He circled it several times among a faint humming outside, somewhat marveling what huge hunk of metal littered the ground. Even after the several times spent, it could hardly be told as one figure from another, but with the distinguishability of cold aura, he scantly had enough material to base a few indents and markings, maybe what served as a reflection, if the dull glint truly said anything. Maybe... a platform, it almost looked. Not the greatest for any regard he could’ve told, but there was a certain way to go—in the lacking memory of a striped helmet, he couldn’t bother otherwise.

A good many more times around, and he finally settled on giving up and starting with a hand. It lashed with a sharp stinging, colder than he could recall in seconds past. He yelped, recoiling, the figure growing deeper into the darkness with every rearing step until he finally fell back, smacking the wall in conjunction with another stamp of the opposite side. An above shelf tremored, his head tickled in the meantime he inspected, but it was sooner he was right back to his next attempt, his legged loomer finally given up atop him.

With a first step, he stuttered and stumbled around, back, and limp somehow, his chest trembling against the surface. In an incredulous tingling, he arose, hands twiddling in as much displayable readiness to their goal, only to immediately meet another sheet of paper, level with the metal. Behind its pristine paleness, a few scratches could be made out.

It was only the first button he’d stepped to, more trembly than he could recall in the last minute or something. In the deepest teeter, on a swing between letting loose his curiosity or leaving the note illegible, the chances couldn’t be helped. The first was the faintest, tiniest light imaginable—a blinking red, but that’d do no good—then nothing, one for a hatch of an ancient handle, readied for a levering, another absolutely nothing but a click. He faintly promised not to get so giddy over such a cold creation, but an instinct told otherwise before he could’ve imagined the wall’s own sigh.

Irked, his spider finally scuttled forward, induced a mumble and reoriented glance, and crawled back to its rest. In his inexplicable twitch, he scratched his head, ignored the next tickling, and followed along with his intended goal, for once, stepping over the enigma’s metal plating a few times before mumbling out all his dear intents, verging the greatest collapse should his sole swaying heel fall off. Somehow he managed balance, only to step forward and immediately trip over a vague indent, crying the whole moment before a hollow thud.

By the time he’d woken, a whole spiral of swayed color had formed just past the clear dome, to an indistinguishable, yet tempting blob. No less than an instant, he stared, taking in the finest illumination alongside the ambience of whirring, sputtering—his legged fellow simply watching above it all before he finally leaned notice and let it back to his head. It was marvelous, like something out of deep space colored so vivaciously with deep yellow and maroon, tasting his breath behind the glass, inhaling every remnant of his forgettal imaginable. The paper swayed beside him, lifting and leveling every moment, a sudden crash emerging outside, a stamp of the wall, but he was far too focused on the greatest light to notice anything.

The only reminder of his accumulation was Starlow’s distinct sigh, but he and his spider knew well the focus. Beyond a category of interest, he was lost in deep thought, imagination of sorts, only for the light to soon expand into the room, booming a bright white, as a voice trailed from what seemed like inside the wall.

“Oh, look who _finally_ showed to greet me.”

The room’s back was let no more to speak, but he’d already long forgotten whatever door that jester-headed beast had been locked under. Among the greatest flash, Plant was chastised for knocking something in the kitchen, the room spun, and he could only brace for the light to finally blind him.

In the last second, there was a distant illusion, still looming, still as shocked as a shadow could show.

He rubbed the undereyes of his mask. The world was too messed and blurry to notice even the faintest sound—the best communication he was capable of was a drooped foot. Though a familiar, scuttly set of stampings murmured over, across his head, soon his mask, he could hardly tell the world as anything but a doozy.

Standing, wobbling, he waved his hands, sluggish, before simply opting for their best assistance—coating his eyes. With little more than a mumble, the door managed as audience, he stumbled for some physical presence, the last traces of an itch above left lingering only for the dark room and its inhabitant.

Falling down the hall, he twitched with every step. He could hardly see straight—whichever way he understood it, it didn’t matter. So distant, he almost bumped into the kitchen cupboard before scraping enough for a mumble, then, clutching his head, repeated the procedure, instead down the faint dining room.

Really, it was a wonderful thing he still had a clamp to connect with. After so long, he’d really only have wished for something to coat his eyes, but by striking the next wall, all was replaced with sudden confusion. His back empty, he swished, groping with his face to the muffled environment behind. There, at the once eager dining table, filled with discussions of invitations, possible culprits behind them, and whatnot, stood a cold silence, the shine dim.

Shuddering with all might, he advanced. It wasn’t the words greeting him anymore, it wasn’t even a form of temperature. There had to have been more time to find some something to clean with—even some improvisation with the only paper he’d taken along—but the first voice lulled him quicker than the returned darkness. The air misty, confused at his presence, he shivered toward the living room’s entry, so many figures, faces, and fronts doubtlessly looming, expecting his appearance for even more quakes. In time, there came the hopeless floating, and at last he just induced a headache and moved on, desperate for a single phrase he could understand.

“Oh, you made it just in time! Where have you been?” She idled a moment, then burst to just above his back. “Nevermind—come on!”

Starlow ushered him forward, faint grays, blues, voices, memories staggering as the moment turned to a minute, his shivers turned to shattering shards. Almost immediately, a laugh broke off the side couch, and he burrowed his face into himself as a few more joined to the mix. Soon the whole audience had turned to him, the lengths of both sofas, the mix of all standing, all sitting, all doing whatever among the sidelines, all eager to let the common goal of inducing burns.

All the way to the same corner of the room—he could tell by whatever subconsciousness had to depend on—where one look up would reveal something he’d so desperately longed to disregard since arrival. For a worthwhile cause, he had to accept his forgetfulness, but it took so, so long since promising himself.

Turning up, expectation was fullest in the immediate tremor, from level position the stripes looming down to the same expression, a spotless helmet. There wasn’t a droplet of drool.

BZZT gave a welcoming eye, sputtering. He greeted, himself, and tried a sag again, only for the fleeting quietude to be interrupted by another commotion. At last, a hand trying, failing shying rest on his head, the warmth endorsed him. He lay lifeless at the sight of it all, but even if the most predominant of anything stuck him so hard, the cold rear nudging made only indifference to the expression.

Colorful, they were. If not to compensate for the earnest volume, their distracting, almost enthralling tones, shifts, and blurry voices made up for it—not in a method he was expecting, or even hopeful of, though he couldn’t help but gawk. Sidelined, BZZT suddenly joined, but he was too disturbed to much notice anything besides a pallor, gray robes and their double seated on a short couch, too much strayed hair on the longer. In the open corner, where the entrance stood, a colorful, twin-spiring hat couldn’t help but bug the crude, yet intentful holiday sweater and its array of sighing hands beside.

A loud pink and her blank face to her forward, a quieter, equally enveloped blue hair beside—a wonderfully cozy, blanketed pillow in her grasp—bits and bobs littered about their cushions and so many others’ respective heads. In a fraught silence, he would’ve stared, crowded the farthest, emptiest corner of the room where the decorative tree and its array of mismatched boxes, bags, and whatever else once stood, but he was too contented. Nowhere was there a hint of him among the enthralled vortex composed of all others, like he was a time-traveler gazing in on a spectacle he had no purpose or otherwise right to fall into.

A helmet swayed and bobbed before him, and he followed without thought. The pot disappeared behind, the faces churning, a clock twisting among what vision he couldn’t comprehend, and in some form, he’d stumbled to the only other noticeable red of the room—at least that he was willing to note. Their form would’ve towered, had they merely stood.

“Five minutes!” a milky hand called from the shorter couch.

By a second, the gooey monstrosity had formed behind them, left to find nothing but a simplest gaze. It too was soon lost to the others, only to be replaced by a distant chuckle, a light pounding as far as he could tell. He turned, the sole joined face returning the stare. On the sidelines, a stepping grew and grew, but the only aspect the transfixion shared was blankness.

“What’re ya’ guys doing over here?” the final figure asked alongside a last bound.

He only turned, his cohort following in tandem. Though its eyes were doubtlessly lopsided, he was stiff.

“Playin’ ‘round over here with this buddy?” He stepped around until equally lateral with the scrunched knees, his flopping hat the only source of their attention. “Man, I’d ‘a ‘spected everyone to be crowding around here or something. They know who he is yet?”

He circled a few times over, inspecting their short stature, slightly mudded shoes, and crooked cap. Upon reaching his prior side again, he suddenly stopped. With the slightest lift, his foot charged toward the tip of the jacket, his audience watching in mildly varied shivers, only to merely tap the tip of his shoe against the zipper. Though how busy it was a moment anywhere, it sounded like a nightmare.

“‘Ay, kiddo.”

They panted frailly. With a final inhale, their breathing became audible.

“Yo, bub.” He sidestepped. “Yoohoo. Over here.”

It seemed like his voice would’ve rang for hours, while he ached as a side-spectacle, only for the cap to finally designate some dim interest, a jittery stare forward. Their eyelids trembling from their own exhausted setting, a hand raised, limp, let fall onto their stomach with a cold breath, the shivering to return.

“Spar... key?” they murmured finally, the inert jester hat sparking sudden interest beside. Their face plummeted. “No... n-no... null...”

He stood for a moment, a warm commotion begging at least some presence to join behind.

“Alright, I ain’t getting anything outta this here sucker. How ‘bout, uh... ‘Null-Bubby’, eh? You likin’ that?”

They gasped, sudden and silent, before trembling a finger up from its eternal frost. An astonishment, to say the least, it at least managed a reaction of the farther audience.

“Good enough.”

He mixed a few sounds and mumbles, only to finally give up and sag, skipping sluggishly to where his other spectators stood. Both scurried back.

“So you ever gonna open your present or something? What’s it—been sitting here for like, days, or something?”

The fresh box tapped, almost echoey. He recoiled a few more steps back, nearly tripping at the start of the carpet. He turned, stared—a knowing intent transmitted by silent, spaced look alone—then both looked back to what could finally be recognized as nonsensical rambling. 

A pair of footsteps drew back, though both faces ahead didn’t notice, or, at least, didn’t care. Even briefer than the one before, he took a fullest glimpse into the green gaze trembling beside, doubled his own back, then scrambled, both vaguely on the same path toward potted company.

“So ya’ got anything shiny?”

Starlow side-eyed from above, but otherwise, their return fell unnoted beyond a simple puff. The leagues of silence finally abandoned, distrusted, whatever it took to forget their appeal, he fell unconscious to the voices suddenly grown all around. Maybe it wasn’t so bad last he recalled, but it was far louder than he was sure capable of enduring in any natural state. He forced a shiver, then hummed a jittery song to himself, whittling the time by scurried glimpses.

Someone yelped from the same couch of before, then the chat suddenly halted. At once, he conjoined all remnants to a modest quiver, then followed a glance along to one, then to their attention, where a gray face sat in growing trembles.

“Uh...”

His hand raised, the reflection across the couch instead seeing something like a shrug.

“He said two minutes.”

Someone nodded, hummed inwardly, and before he was capable of much else, the room lay in modified chaos once again. Immediately, he was brought to a greatest scrunch of mind, shattering at the barrages, endless fires erupting from all simple voices chattering around. He kept telling himself something—maybe an assurance, but he couldn’t tell one pitch from another—he kept struggling to find a stable softness to ease into, something he somehow knew well couldn’t exist, but it was worth a desperate plead, regardless.

By the last word, he finally collapsed; only, it was a rounded metal he fell into, not a cold, flat silence. He couldn’t doubt the frigidness of the surface, but, mindlessly groping for the plug he could’ve promised was somewhere, at the moment, a helmet was as good as a bed for him. With a hum of exhaustion, he let himself to a dream.

“One minute!”

He must’ve been the only motion of the room, but he was too weary to notice. 

Tracked only by aura, he groped around his hard surface, first rubbing in all its dear comfort, soon remembering and driving it forward, letting him stumble upright as crushed cries littered the blurry air around. He fell to the edge of the wall, then slammed all his energy out, a teetering drawn nearby.

Again came the same robustness of anywhere, the hard tremors of something ringing his vision, but the only display came in a few, whispering and rushing about to their final designations. BZZT finally deemed its battle with balance, but even with how loud the shudder came, the new silence was enthralling.

It wasn’t much that he didn’t know where his dizziness had dropped him to—a bit twisted, surely, but nothing he needed awareness of. Samey, all those decorations were, he couldn’t help but gawk, missing the point of all carefully stacked, anxious tedium brimmed to every figure stilled beneath. Foily, bright, colorful, it was something like an enormous party, if ever to describe all those illegible wordings scattered around.

“Thirty seconds!”

It’d been so long since he first saw away from the dim winter outside, only moments before faring with all faces that couldn’t dare disperse from each other. Not much his interest, or even preference, but the mere fact, he couldn’t help. That he and his favorite companion stood together was the most, but in another look, he could almost see it with some others. A blue and grey-robed pair of ovoids on the shorter couch, two entire waterfalls of bright and cool hair on the longer couch, one who almost resembled a spider—none of which he ever bothered to remember in the times they spoke, though he had about as many names as he needed, anyway.

Nothing special, nothing unorthodox, just... a mixed celebration of so many. One he’d been invited to, for that matter. Regardless whether those dear boxes under his name were long gone, the time was just right.

“Twenty!”

The last few made their mild burst. The sofas were settled, the gaps filled all around. Only the jester hat lay ramming forward in a matter of instants, left to stumble and almost topple into the blue blob, its cavernous stare an imminent enigma before scooting off to nowhere.

Finally, the moment struck him awake. BZZT gave a side-glance, sidestepping with every word spoken, only to suddenly cut about halfway from its prior position and intended distance, where he shivered in blank contemplation.

“Ten!” one of the robed ones started.

The look up was final before he even signaled it.

“Nine!” A few others joined for the count in the next second. “Eight!”

In the farthest corner was a spotted head and a clock. Both were dark, almost to the point of new distinctness under their positional shade.

“Seven! Six!”

He couldn’t even make out the numbers, but his mind was lost on anything besides. In a sudden burst, a cold stamping flew near, the helmet nuzzled to his side, but his stare would’ve only rang as absentminded, if ever decipherable.

“Five!” the voices sang, even louder.

He twitched. It wasn’t cold anymore, but hardly a sweat was designated to answering. It was warm, even, like himself, like his sole buddy, unintentionally nudging beside, like everything. With a single reach, he could’ve splayed out an age of warmth, like an expanded ripple, a wave across the airy pond of sights and colors to be seen in everyone.

“Four!”

Plant backed, did some indistinguishable dance, but it’d all grown too distant.

“Three!”

It... was something like a gleeful distraction.

“Two!”

It wasn’t much anything he needed to know—only a slight nod to the ever-confusion of what was supposed to be happening.

“One!”

In an eager voice and sense... sure. He really hadn’t a clue of what was going on around him. His questions would’ve formed a barrage and another thousand of surplus, where for, his guesses would be on nothing—just for all to be tossed and forgotten. Even his methods for attaining a former silence, regardless if internal, even his slightest tap of a foot, even the slightest nod against him, a delighted, green gaze deep into him, whatever it all amounted to, he still had his paper to grasp.

After all, it was a sure experience getting to know such a fleeting and thunderous witness.

“Happy ne—”

The spider-figure in the corner suddenly trailed off. All stared into him, an alarm blaring rainbows of sparkly sprinkles into the air, and he dropped his hands in the silence.

“Happy new year!” one of the eggs started for the rest.

By the second word, everyone had joined him. Whether Plant, in its glaring, yet still simply odd choke, BZZT, under one of the most energetic sparks he’d heard fly of its own sort of voice—himself, even, hands toppled into the air with a word indistinguishable to his own senses—they cheered. He cheered right along with them, all for the instants the confetti reigned, while the drops of lush heat rained for all.

Nothing was quiet anymore. Nothing was so much straying chilly. If stuffy, if merely mellow, if threatened by the gooey one’s scuttling, its flinging of tongue and spit, he didn’t mind anymore. He didn’t really care to, any longer. All seemed a bit warmer, if he could believe it, but the main focus was any hand he could come across ahead.

Even more predominantly, he appreciated his own deed to stick around, and without consciousness, he celebrated so wildly with everyone, their shadows of the distance looming in the party as much as they cared to be noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I've reached the milestone of the first New Year's since my delve into writing began last February. (When _that_ date rolls around, though, I'll be accessing some other occasion or whatnot.) It's still New Year's Eve as of my writing this, but I do intend to stay up till midnight to manage absolutely nothing more than a recent in-joke.
> 
> Why Shy Guy for this? Why not one of my more predominant characters, why not take a spy into BZZT's deep, dark helmet of mysteries, a plug only that one-off Goombeetle could carry when formulated in my mind? To answer: I dunno. I don't remember what I was doing, I guess I just decided to use him for it, and whoop-de-doo, there he is taking the spotlight for my New Year's special. Not much to it.
> 
> So evaluations and whatnot, something like that, I guess: ~~obligatory~~ I liked what I managed to pump out this year. Sure, I've many times reevaluated my oldest works for what they are in a more objective lens, but honestly, I like some of the "gems" I surprised even myself with. Some drafts have come and gone, of a boy trying to find his way home, of a robot who wants it all; and then there were the concepts. Those things that I've planned, I've maybe written for later memory, shifted between works, and altered for better "consistency" in my eyes. I got some of those things planned for next year, but I got no friggin idea when I'll get to 'em.
> 
> Until the next year, I guess. See ya' in the next wisp.


	4. Red Mint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's getting pretty late... maybe time for bed, soon.

For such a while, the party was unstoppable. The trails of heads, waves of commotion, they all disrupted, yet not excluded, in oceans of performance, like a single move could ravage a block from its premise. Few lurked, most hardly stuck their sounds of wordings or whatnot, but in a whole experience, the reasoning was undeniable.

If, only, a bit unclear as to the point of their remainder, but there was scarcely a bother to be placed. As much as it’d care to share the displeasure, whatever the timing, attitude, or sheer crowdedness of the room discernible only by its two signature couches, there couldn’t help but lay some mixed dispute about the time spent. On one hand, sure, a certain point of the new fellows had to have strayed far enough above decent to have met—especially in such a relaxed, mixed bag of gray attire and everything. Regardless what little could ever be said about him, he was a doubtless favorite.

Though, there happened _only_ that fraction that could be worth it. It’d have been quite fine without the deed or need to stick along for the trip, and with how motionless some of them could become, how sheerly devoid of stature their words could program, it was hard to consider the bag as much more than a moderate twist. In composition, they were fine—it’d been proven with the countdown and its margins—but when seeing the certain few interact, something had to dissipate.

Beyond the waking mess of that awkward jester hat, the packs of those two, equal stares of blankness, eyeing the same pillow either could’ve held, and some other systems of regret, the time stood. Near as could be told, nothing had shifted since prior to all that, since Shy Guy had finally come back to greet. Maybe it was just some self-miscommunication, but none else seemed much bothered by his words of before. If not to touch on the subject, there was a definite explanation to his departure however long past, but such a return didn’t seem right.

Gone, again, though, whisked alongside the most enormous breeze of transportation and congregation powers unrivaled, all the way into the deepest core. Shy Guy, Starlow, Assistant, however many more it was without bothering to look back into the spattered desert. Time again, it was the faceless spark heard from so far off, the trailing of voices, final words of warmth before leading behind a shudder of the doorway shut, a crying bell to join with the others in the kitchen, but at some blank whirlwind past, the tides of selection suddenly turned.

He shivered as long and hard as before, resting beside the only inhabitants still ventured into the wasteland—a foily box, its towering antenna, and a helmet. Hardly so much a hint to base off of, but something about that spire seemed so remotely linked. If just once taking into consideration anything but the lacking presence presiding, the odd specialty of its form in general, there could almost be found a sort of distant response to the tower, far, far above.

The air swayed, the clock shifting. Time by a moment, the fan lay dormant, the corner light limp, inexplicable breezes swishing past, off to the kitchen where the finalizing cohort prepared some oddly intentful speeches among pairs. Something like shared laughs, occasional midsts of silence, a perfect humming in response to some decent whispers—an overall quiet tendency shared round—but all lay indecipherable past the only wall containing a cold drought from a pyrrhic party.

“You been hanging around with NullBubby yet?” the lightest voice whined—a trailblaze of forgotten interest.

“Marx, can you tell me who it is _without_ hassling me with nicknames?”

“Well, whaddya want me to say, then?”

A spurt of steps flew in, where a couple faces littered the inescapability of the dining table. By first plant in, Marx turned to the new witness, Magolor in remarkable tandem. They only stared, the outnumbering quickly luring a shiver, a spark, and an attempt at pressing by with mere, fallen hopes.

“There any outlets ‘round here?”

A palm immediately boomed down to the table. “Marx, don’t even think about it.”

“C’mon! Whose house is this, anyway?”

Under a trembly syllable, the voice turned bleak. As much directed as it was toward only Marx, itchy aboard his spotless and basic seat, the stare reigned over steps jittery as could be considered echoey. An excessive journey, straying by enough for a view dense enough, the willful hand and apologetic glimpse only fell lifeless, the hanging cable ablaze in attention for the moment.

Appliances and all, the counters and their cavity, the fridge’s environment was pale. In the farthest corner, Plant stood, a guardian to the corner cabinets and scattered utensils, moments spanning while its head swished off wherever its hard expressionlessness could dim. Boarded on the dirt of its pot stood maybe exactly the fellow best be seen, but in a quiver, its head loomed. Shy Guy clutched its stem with unrivaled will.

The reverberations trailed simply, a doubtless, dribbly eye over. To another plain corner of the room, there happened a clack, an exploded shiver, and a whimper.

“Oh, hey,” Starlow droned from above. “Y’know, we’ll probably be going soon. In case you had any last plans before then.”

A nod slipped. She stared, blinked a regard, then sighed, her face faintly hollow before turning up again—an environment pitied for only more tremors. Deep, cut, they eyed, the only two alive simultaneously the only manner around. Not in any sense a good one from what little could be understood, but on regard, maybe Plant wasn’t what to be expected for the next while.

Hardly another bother, and the hall drew an envelopment over again. Literally, it wasn’t much more than a blankness, steps of pallor induced only by the ones who chose it upon themselves. To a sudden dustball in the road, there wasn’t anything in wakes of hesitation. In a dazzle, it seemed, the corner was almost bumped on the leave, a mild rattle sustained until falling to a hump at the end of the short line.

One look, half-blurred from a probable loosening upon the knock, and it was revealed nowhere the faceless plating long inquired some time back. If existent, it’d have been repeated personally, but the robot was nowhere to be seen—not then, not in the newfound room, a tattered couch in its unforeseeable endurance. It wasn’t particularly notable, or even clear, for that matter, what it was rested over those seats, only for a faintest whine to scatter all the dissonance.

The seats stood their inhabitants, blank, implicit faces, each with a hand over their same pillow. Both turned to the confused whimper between them, a largest scatter finally imminent with the struck realization, and Francisca let her fingertips over the robed head. In a single, fluent stroke, she scratched the tip of the pillow, its limp immediate with her motion, and in only a few more, there came the fallen purr. An ease, and she leaned toward, another, paler face rising from the interest with only one signal.

Her hair blew atop the figure, and there came no hesitation. Down, back, eyeing the final front, just about a collapse was prepared by reaching the kitchen, frozen solid.

“Yeah, y’hear? I bet you seen how I got all locked and tucked away in there, but I’ll let you in on a secret,” Marx said, his stature reformed atop the chair. “So you seen ‘bout what happened, but while I was in there—I tell ya’—Susie came on over, and... she bit me!”

The audience puffed, a groan to signify the new shuddering immaculate. The ground held docile, but it almost seemed teetering on the will to reverse roles with its only contact. Starlow’s weary glimpse was less than a hint in the midst—Plant and its environment invisible entirely.

The first spring was gone without a wave. She eyed, watched with the glitter of color alone, though held no remark until another breath.

“I could’ve sworn you jumped a lot higher than that,” she said, a dull sag following momentarily. With an inward grumble, she twisted in place. “Is Assistant still around?”

The corner emptied, a trail of mumbles all left to know she’d been heard at all before disappearing down the farther hallway. A few else words joined of the outskirts, though he quickly subsided in favor of a greater grasp.

A voice hurled back, quiet stares weighing the environment even further from the desperate reality. Like a missile, Marx switched his face back and forth, a mere, outer glance to his side, but for once it looked he was in the clear to be doing anything. Whether to close, the idea was an immediate settle, not for comfort, not even if it meant a trace of her certainty. A cold spark in the air, a ring broken into havoc throughout a step and a half, crystal echoes, none else were much concerned besides their own affairs.

In a frigid eye, the room shuddered, and all could be done was follow in suit.

“Gone, ain’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s she think she’s doin’ over there, then?”

A hard grumble—a step raised. Above a half-consideration for the one desperation so concerning prior, a minute motion marched forward. In a careful contemplation, inspection to the eager faces of the kitchen and appliances, the mask of the halls stood dormant. He hardly looked ready for another peek, though if only it could’ve meant never abandonment.

“‘Ay!” Marx called to the hall, a shiver tempered to the table’s host and its beyond. “What’re you—”

“Marx, shut it.”

“Whaaa? I din’t know you’s was out here taking in—t-taking in _me’s_ words.”

Magolor sunk his face to a palm and groaned. “There’s not going to be a next gathering we’re taking part in.”

“Huh? Oh, cool.”

For an instant, the silence stammered to a stand, the two shifting in their seats. On the greatest behalf of a miracle, the only thought drooped alongside its helmet.

“Assistant’s not here, ya’ little poop he—”

Somehow, none had even bothered with a sound. Shy Guy must’ve been trembling at sight of the first word, if not already fallen to the curse of shivers by the terrible jester hat alone.

“What? Just makin’ the most of my last times here.”

Magolor, fortunately, seemed to have at least some mind for what disaster loomed down the deepest hall. With an awkward chuckle, a wave of his hand to what could’ve only stood hollow, he shifted his look from the greatest expression of the room—though whether warranted would’ve been debatable.

“Hey!”

At the word, there was a last mist of a face, deepness comparable only to pitch-blackness, and the pallor of a mask simply stood.

“ _What_ did you just call me?” Starlow continued, her face exploding from the hidden hall.

But regardless her ferocious attitude, the silence kept its most caring position. An entrapment, a contested and scrapped remembrance of the moment—the only voices hadn’t even muffled. The inhabitants of the table would’ve been disputed on her position, the rest warped into the same attributions, but in time, the memory twiddled around, aimless in the new environment.

The light was just as dim, yet warm as expected and wanted, blaring to the sizable silence some specks of sound to be sputtered around, but the only hopes were dissolved. The same corner held open, samey as recallable, but in a shiver inducement, a tremble from her tone alone and an arctic wind, there happened a forgotten piece of paper on the ground.

_Gone for clone denial. Expect cereal._

The kitchen let its mightiest word, an eager chomp, and before any more, the hints of some sketched blue blob had fizzled with the leap of the sheet. A step chased it, the voices too distant to mutter something distinct enough for the living room to be heard, whether by frigidness or fallen frost.

By the cable dangling to the new hub of litter, a trailing had finally emerged behind the farthest, deepest corner. Any care left had folded by the mere sight, but in a miracle, the choked mumble came with attention.

A nod, Shy Guy shuddered from his spot, made a step or so, then returned the gesture and started off to his position again. If not a bit touched, he’d have had a follower—it was an even bigger miracle he didn’t notice the lack of a cable scraping a trail behind. It was only a blank midst, after all, the box as big, ripe for unwrapping as could be. Some blew in the breeze, but it hardly came noticed without realization of much anything wrong with the new silence of the corner.

Then was the first circle. Puzzled, a deeper spy was taken all around, to the outer edges—really any bit of the front half or so—only for the twist to be noted. In a hard jolt, it _wasn’t_ her calling out in that word, there was no departure, no victory to be held in escaping shudders. A soaring conclusion, yet the box came deeper than only the face, and in an instant, curiosity stole consciousness, an odd shape of paper trampled many times over, the cavity of the present only observed in times taken.

In the outer world was a cold, the spattering of night, layerings of white scattered about. For the last instant, a giggle shattered any will or sense of daring to smart the elements for a mere call, but Marx alone would’ve never been enough. Had one last look been taken, had it not, the house stood quiet, an unaltered shadow by the last delve into the outside.

The stairs were meaningless as the steps tripped down, in no particular hurry, onto the crunch of cold’s embodiment, a dense fog carpeting the entire ground, but the world ahead was the only mode to go. There might’ve been a final glimpse through the doorway, into the lacking space where the once antenna-clad present stood, hollow, but it was incomprehensible. The steps only grew, fainter and fainter by the light, soon faring with temptation of surrender, something vague, but intentful. Something almost like...

...uncertainty?

The remainder of the household fell into haze, deep gone with a few steps to track the motive back, but still, he couldn’t be found. Anywhere, somewhere, a sputter called for some presence, but the new rain had already dawned down. The helmet could’ve only looked a pitiful snowglobe, its cries and whines frost sparks, deterred of their any objective, but it was nothing without the small determination to cling to. In the desperation of falling snow, someone was out there—someone who needed guidance from the frigidness—but there only came crying.

In a final scurry, it panted forth all last will to a rush forward, where it could finally collapse, rest a plug to the ground, and limp forever; only, it completely missed. By actually paying attention again, if even considerable such a deed in the horrible snow, the shapes of spires could be seen, towering into the abyssal skies. At once, it dared to consider the force of such a rudimentary motion, and though it took some forced consideration, it backed, sobbed one last time, and turned upward, where a boy once stood, a curious striped helmet in his hands.

It was only the notion of who could shiver more, after all.

He turned, a deepest shudder forced around the desolate trio before it finally glanced up to the only supposed guest. Toppling his own feet from their locks, he tilted, so far it looked he should’ve faceplanted into the snow long since, but it was the most assuring thing, knowing his face was still blinking.

“Bzzt?” he mumbled, as clear as sunlight through the ferocious wind.

Without much of a bother for the expression, he turned back, a bit to the skies, before a great grumble arose. It shivered to the sound, doing a best effort to maybe look into the red jacket, somehow stuck cap, and what other of forward, though the noise was hard to ignore. In an inexplicable blinding, it faced the odds, where the dangle of a scarf broke attention, the aura of a dark, cosmic shadow shattered the cold.

At last, it fell limp behind its guardian’s legs, not bothering a peek anymore as his hands raised, lifted the identical helmet to his head, and fell to a sobbing breeze. The snow rained harder, the any hopes of return long dismissed, but his arms ahead simply dropped, not a care for anything with how limp against the tremors of forward. He must’ve stared down, cold and lifeless as itself, a perfect gaze of steel transmitted from one mask down to another, but all of a sudden, the figure screeched again. His face lifted, a cable falling across his back, and he succumbed to the stare of ahead. He walked without follow, it trembled without attention, and in tandem, they both felt even nearer the presence of an astral being.

Its head only planted down, expecting the worst of the most desolate location in the universe enveloping. A good while, it trembled, crying to itself with sparks unheard, while the communication never ceased. Like a great emission of sponge, the air itself broke open, a dark and shallow orb emitted from the phase, and at last, it hurried its senses long enough to stare forward.

Whatever there, the boy was too tall to notice anything behind, and soon they collapsed, deep into the mind of an enormous marble enveloping them both. In a new, calming silence, they lifted into the air, a chunk of snow hanging inside their bubble, but in a sudden wake, there almost could’ve been something assured in view. The most perfect glance ever seen—however much feared—it was almost something like a space enthusiast awaiting the tinted air beneath them, but all fizzled into sunset as the two brimmed with equal stiffnesses, left seeping through their shield a puncture of panic as they dozed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang friggit this work took up my entire December. As much as I actually somewhat enjoyed writing a Crower's Blight 'round here, I got plenty more to get done.
> 
> Anyway, first update of the new year. I don't really have anything else I can say without reiterating, so... "what the poop"?


End file.
